VISION is a grand thing in politics. It betokens ambition, confidence and hope. Yesterday, Finance Secretary Derek Mackay outlined a digital future for Scotland, in which the whole country had superfast broadband (within five years), tens of thousands of jobs were created, and everyone was connected to everything everywhere in a cyber-safe society of electronic equals that transcended physical boundaries.
However, vision is also useful for seeing what is going on at present, and the picture presented by Ross, Skye and Lochaber – normally praised for the aesthetic beauty of its physical landscape – is much less pretty in the digital sense. A survey from the House of Commons Library reveals that the constituency has the lowest average broadband speeds in Scotland and the second lowest in the UK after Carmarthen East, in Wales.
In Ross, Skye and Lochaber, only 13 per cent of constituents have a superfast connection, which requires a broadband speed of at least 30 Megabits per second (Mbps). Indeed, 66 per cent of the constituency is unable to receive speeds of 10 Mbps and, as the area’s SNP MP Ian Blackford has pointed out, that is the minimum needed for services such as online banking and shopping websites that other people take for granted. Perhaps more worryingly, given our welfare system’s current penchant for punishing the poor, it creates problems for people on Universal Credit, who are expected to use the internet for “paperwork” such as making claims, keeping up-to-date records and filling in journals that prove they are not feckless. And that is before we consider the well-rehearsed business reasons for fast broadband, particularly in remote areas, where it enlarges markets as it shrinks distance, and where working from home with an internet connection should be a seriously good fit. All of this helps keep native populations up and attracts new residents.
We can sympathise when reasons of distance and terrain are adduced as difficulties in supplying communications infrastructure to remote areas. But campaigners and commentators have compared our geographical lot to that of the Faroe Islands, where every resident already has broadband at speeds among the fastest in the world.
Scotland is not Faroe, of course, but we don’t necessarily mean that in a good way. The latter seems to have managed by better use of fibre-optic cable and by a much simpler and more straightforward contract with state-controlled company Faroese Telecom.
The Scottish Government, by contrast, awarded the business to British Telecom – or BT Openreach; even the names are increasingly bewildering – and, according to critics, that has resulted in a less than optimal use of fibre-optic cable in a contract that is a hotch-potch of complex financial arrangements, with little or no scope for those left behind getting in alternative suppliers.
None of which, if true, is down to Mr Mackay, who inherited the set-up (though, admittedly from his colleagues). No use in him looking back to what might have been. But, looking ahead, for the people of Ross, Skye and Lochaber, it would be a grand thing if the future could be speeded up a little.
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