Stirling City in Scotland Approves Plan to Build High Speed Fibre Network

The city of Stirling in central Scotland, which is partly wrapped around an old fortress and medieval town, looks set to build a new fibre optic broadband network in the area after the local council approved a new Gigabit City plan.

At present most of the city can already access a “high-speed” broadband service (24Mbps+ “superfast” coverage currently sits at around 75-80%) and the aim under the wider Digital Scotland project is to see this pushed to 93.4% by 2017, which itself was boosted from the original goal of 75% after the council injected an additional £600,000.

In contrast the Stirling Gigabit City project is intended to complement Digital Scotland, albeit with a focus on connecting public sector sites and local businesses rather than residential homes. The council envisages a 10Gbps (Gigabits per second) capable fibre optic network and an anchor tenant orientated design, which suggests precisely the sort of model that Cityfibre would adopt.

Councillor Neil Benny, Finance and Economy, said:

“As a Council we are committed to providing the best digital infrastructure possible for our community, fully recognising its importance for enhancing learning opportunities in our schools and libraries and in supporting our existing business community and attracting new inward investment.

One of the real benefits of the way the Gigabit City scheme works is that customers can more easily increase or decrease the amount of bandwidth they use, depending on their needs at any particular time. It’s this kind of individual responsiveness that makes it such an attractive prospect, and why we are pleased to support progression of this project for Stirling.

We are clear that an improved digital picture is something we want for the whole of the Stirling area, not just the city, and we are working very closely with all our communities to find the best way forward. For example the Council arranged a Supplier Event in Kippen earlier this month which was a chance to promote awareness of alternative solutions and connect communities with potential service providers.

We’re also in discussions with providers about improved mobile phone coverage across our rural area and will continue to work closely with all our communities on this and other initiatives going forward.”

The plan will now go forwards to enter the procurement stage, where the council hopes to identify a supplier that can do the job. As hinted above, we’d peg Cityfibre as a very strong bet.