Skyenet Expands Rural Wireless Broadband Service on the Isle of Skye

Skyenet, a rural community project that delivers fixed wireless broadband services to Aird, Achnacloich, Tokavaig, Ord and Drumfearn on the remote Isle of Skye in Scotland, has announced that their network will soon be expanded to include Heaste in the south of Sky and other Sleat villages.

The Skyenet project, which is supported by the Community Broadband Scotland (CBS) initiative and officially went live during April 2015, has recently joined with a similar network that was previously being run by the community of Tarskavaig where it served just 20 connections.

At present users of the service are only promised a bog standard unlimited broadband service of just 5Mbps (Megabits per second), which costs £19.80 per month (plus £100 for a one-off installation and an included router). But plans are afoot to increase these speeds to “superfast” (24-30Mbps+) levels in the very near future.

Angus Robertson, Sleat Community Trust Manager, said:

“We’re delighted to be extending the network further. The communities are working together to create a reliable, affordable broadband network.

Many customers in the project were just too far away from their exchange to see a useable broadband service. As well as providing better broadband now the network is future proofed. When access opens up to a fibre backhaul in Mallaig we plan to provide superfast services – hopefully in the early part of next year.”

Apparently the current infrastructure is based off a “twin looped network” that is being delivered via 13 masts. The current target is to connect 75 premises by the end of the year and 100 into 2016, with Heaste likely to go live any-time now. Future expansion into other areas is also being considered.