Background, possibilities and current state of local broadband provision for the Balquhidder, Lochearnhead & Strathyre area.
On Friday 20th November we held the first public meeting for Balquhidder Community Broadband: we’ve been working away these past months to get costs, tenders and demand sorted out and now have at least the first steps towards effective, community-driven broadband for our area. And not before time. For any who missed the occasion, a video version of the presentation is on youtube:
Like many other rural Scottish communities, our problem is geography: having a fairly small but highly dispersed population strung out along the loch sides and side glens. Our core funding from Community Broadband Scotland will cover the capital expenditure and setup for our external connection and at least the bulk of our costs for our backbone within the glen, which is great. However, connecting the outlying clusters of properties (most of them farms) might be pushing the limits of available funding.
Our exercise of trying to squeeze a quart into a pint pot – bringing Gigabit-class fibre broadband to Balquhidder Glen at sustainable cost continues. However, another basic of twenty-teens life is coming to Balquhidder, this time after only moderate whinging from us locals.
We have now set up a community email list for all those interested in the rollout and progress of Balquhidder Community Broadband: please go here if you’re interested in receiving news or asking questions.
In light of the CBS funding for broadband provision to Balquhidder, we have now created a Community Interest Company (CIC) to contract, promote and support the local broadband service.
Our remit is to provide Balquhidder and those surrounding areas not addressed by Digital Scotland’s rollout with broadband, as a minimum meeting the OFCOM and EU definition of Superfast BroadBand (SFBB) of 30 Mbps, matching the declared goal of the Scottish Government for “World Class” broadband services and being ‘future-proof’ as needs and services change.
For further information, please contact us.
After the major, albeit long predicted, disappointments of BT’s failure to include Balquhidder in its rollout of fibre broadband and Digital Scotland’s refusal to recognise the deeply flawed nature of their contract with BT, we are now in the much happier position of being able to report that Community Broadband Scotland has accepted our case for capital funding for broadband provision to the Balquhidder area. There are several ways in which we can do this and we’re now working with CBS to put together an initial invitation to tender. Continue reading Better news: Balquhidder Broadband
Right since I started using Tooway, my monitoring device (a RIPE Atlas monitor) has been recording periods of packet loss on the Tooway network. I’ve raised this several times with Avonline’s technical support but never received a meaningful answer, or indeed one that demonstrates that they understand the issues. Periods of packet loss do not appear to correlate with heavy precipitation.
So, until proven otherwise, we have to assume that this is an inherent property of their service. So what does that mean?
The lack of effective broadband provision in the local area has been an issue since early Celtic times: engravings on local standing stones indicate regular sacrifices of proto-human network executives to propitiate the gods of connectivity. Little has changed since and multiple attempts have been since made to improve the state of local communications. Given just how critical effective broadband is to economic and social development and the sustainability of rural communities, it may be time to reintroduce human sacrifice…
