BRENDAN Dick in his letter “Scotland is leading the UK with impressive broadband speeds” paints a glowing outlook on broadband speeds (The long letter, The National, 20 September). He quotes various statistics from independent sources: Thinkbroadband, UK Broadband Stakeholders Group and results for the four nations of the UK.
I find his assessment somewhat perplexing based on the following articles and other statistics: “43 million broadband users have unreliable home connections,” Uswitch, August 2017; “Slow broadband a major bugbear for nearly half of UK households” Uswitch, June 2017; “Superfast broadband cost set to double in four years” The Herald, May 2017; “Study backs immediate action on broadband before rural areas are left behind”, Dr Lorna Phillip, Aberdeen University.
In The Herald, March 23 2017, in an article (based upon information from a survey by the House of Commons Library) it’s claimed “Highlands broadband speeds among the worst in the UK”. The survey indicated that only the areas in the central belt had speeds greater than 57 Mb/s and most of the Highlands were less than 10 Mb/s.
This was further emphasised in recent Ofcom reports. In a graph depicting “percentage of premises unable to receive a given download speed”, the results were in rural areas: nine per cent receive less than 2 Mb/s; 22 per cent less than 5 Mb/s and 48 per cent less than 10 Mb/s compared with two per cent; four per cent and eight per cent for the whole of the UK.
This clearly indicates that larger conurbations benefit, by a huge factor, better broadband speeds. Scotland has always lagged in relation to broadband availability.
In a UK national statistic the number of internet service providers with their own network into BT exchanges shows Scotland on 29.4 per cent; Wales 49.2per cent; Northern Ireland 56.6 per cent and England 66.5 per cent.
A shocking statistic, resulting, in Scotland, that most ISPs are dependent on BT wholesale services in connecting to their servers. Scotland has 1052 exchanges and from the same source (www.samknows.com), indicating that only 532 exchanges in Scotland have Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) available for these broadband services.
Dick is correct in supporting innovation (in Skerray and Altnaharra) using long reach VDSL equipment. However, he must recognise that VDSL can only be accepted as a short term fix. Openreach’s alternative proposal to the UK Government regarding a broadband Universal Service Obligation (USO) of 10 Mb/s cannot be acceptable when research indicates that the majority of SMEs and families require at least 30 Mb/s in the near future.
I agree with Dick that the recent Scottish Government contracts have improved connectivity and that the Scottish Governments future Reaching 100% Programme will vastly improve on broadband speed and availability (www.gov.scot/Publications/2017/07/4529).
However, one should note that the current Scottish Government BT contract was based upon superfast broadband of up to 25 Mb/s. The Reaching 100% Programme will be based upon Next Generation Access (NGA) specification for broadband speeds greater than 30 Mb/s. Funding is from EU, UK and Scottish Government in both programmes.
Dick’s comment regarding “working to build fibre to the premises connectivity for free into all new developments of 30 houses or more” is the most significant statement from BT for future gigabit services.
I only hope the local authority planning departments and housing developers will have an open attitude to BTs’ marketing information.
George Adam
Linlithgow
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