Businesses and individuals experiencing difficulties obtaining a broadband connection are being urged to come forward before the end of the year.
For the Scottish Government has announced a scheme to extend broadband services to those who want them but cannot get connected due to such factors as distance from an ADSL-enabled telephone exchange.
A fund, worth up to £3.5 million, has been created to find a suitable provider(s) to deliver services with the aim of ensuring people wanting broadband in rural areas are provided with access.
Enterprise Minister Jim Mather said: “As many individuals and businesses in Scotland as possible should have broadband access.
“In this 21st century, broadband is an increasingly vital tool for business and is now used by more and more households as a standard utility. By extending the availability of affordable broadband, we can help create a wealthier and fairer Scotland.”
Anyone with access problems should inform the Scottish Government by the end of 2007 (if they have not already done so) to enable connectivity work to begin in 2008. This can be done online via a broadband problem registration page
Scotland currently has over 99 per cent broadband availability. However, the Scottish Government has been monitoring continuing access difficulties and aims to satisfy the unmet demand for affordable broadband.
The Scottish Government decided on an open procurement approach to deliver affordable and sustainable broadband services after three phases of work - research on broadband reach, discussions with BT (which illustrated the incumbent had no offering to deliver feasible solutions to reach) and more recently, consultation with the wider industry and public on alternative options.
Due to data protection issues on information held by telecom operators, the Scottish Government can only attempt to resolve access problems that are notified directly. Ideally, individuals should have attempted to secure services from existing suppliers by ordering broadband and requesting that an engineer tests their line - as this is the only way to confirm whether broadband is actually available or not.
