Shetland Prep Second Attempt at £2m Full Fibre Broadband Bid

The remote Shetland Islands Council appears to be gearing up for a second attempt at bidding for money from the Government’s £190m Local Full Fibre Network (LFFN) fund, which if successful could be used to extend a new Gigabit “full fibre” (FTTP etc.) network to cater for the proposed space launch site.

At present it’s known that the Shetland Space Centre (SSC) plans to build and operate a satellite launch site in Unst (Shetland), which is recognised as being the United Kingdom’s most northerly island. The plans were recently given a boost after a related Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed with Lockheed Martin to support the proposal.

The area being considered (Lamba Ness) for the new centre is typically quite remote and one obvious problem with that is the lack of existing broadband infrastructure, but the progress now being made by SSC may help the local council to get a bid approved to deploy “full fibre” (FTTP) into Yell and Unst.

A similar bid was attempted but failed last year, although that was before SSC formerly proposed to build a launch site. According to Shetland News, if the second bid is a success then the new high speed broadband link could be delivered by 2019 (we assume that means the end of 2019). The bid itself is expected to be ready by the end of this summer.

The local council is also talking to the Scottish Government about the impact of their £600m R100 project, which aspires to make “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) ISP networks available to “every single premise in Scotland” by the end of 2021 or March 2022 as a financial year (here and here).

Meanwhile the council’s Head of Development, Neil Grant, warned: “If we are unsuccessful in that process, the council may need to consider whether to make that investment directly based on the economic and social benefits.”