Suggestion that whole of the UK should follow Scottish broadband lead

The Broadband Reach Project in Scotland is ongoing with the Scottish Parliament due to award a £3.5 million contract to a company who will then labor to fill in the gaps broadband coverage.

Computer Weekly has discovered that the Enterprise minister Jim Mather believes that businesses might be offered high speed broadband more rapidly if a comparable scheme to the Scottish Reach Project was imitated around the range of regions of the UK. The inducement for this being projections that the gross value added to Scotland’s economy in 2015 is expected to be £2bn to £6bn higher due to business take-up of broadband.

The scheme received approximately 3,000 registrations from people who could not get broadband at present and four firms are in the final running for the contract to produce solutions that will get these people a broadband connection.

It will be fascinating to see what solutions are selected for deployment and the feedback from businesses and people who get broadband. Several of the solutions could be re-used across other parts of the UK where the cable modem and telephone networks do not reach.