THE first areas in rural Scotland to get superfast broadband under a £146 million project have been announced amid concern that people are leaving communities because of slow internet speeds.
More than 16,000 homes and businesses on the outskirts of Inverness, the Black Isle and along the coast into Moray will be the first to benefit.
Ardersier, Buckie, Milton of Leys, Fortrose, Hopeman, Inverness Culloden, Lhanbryde and Lossiemouth will be able to access fibre broadband services from early next year.
The current commercial roll-out across the UK would have reached just 21% of premises in the Highlands and Islands, but with £126.4m of public investment and an additional £19.4m from BT, the new target is 84%.
Stuart Robertson, digital director for Highlands and Islands Enterprise, which is investing £12m, said the new pledge represented a "significant step change".
Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead, who last week told MSPs that there was evidence that a lack of digital connectivity was contributing to depopulation in rural areas, said the investment would be "critical in ensuring the long-term economic prosperity of the Highlands and Islands".
The new Secretary of State for Scotland, Alistair Carmichael, said: "Broadband is vital for jobs, services and the economy in the Highlands and Islands so I'm pleased to see this investment in rural broadband in Scotland is starting to come to fruition."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article