Cairngorms National Park Authority Push Community Broadband Initiative

The Board of the Cairngorms National Park Authority has proposed a 5 year plan for the remote rural region of Scotland, which includes a commitment to support the Cairngorms Community Broadband initiative that aims to bring 30Mbps+ broadband to 1,300 isolated premises.

The community broadband proposal, which is supported by the Scottish Government’s Community Broadband Scotland (CBS) programme, has actually been gestating since 2015 when around £1.2 million of public investment was earmarked to help deploy the new network (here).

CNPA Statement

The economy of the National Park is strong, business confidence is high and there is a good degree of networking and collaboration between businesses thanks to the work of the Cairngorms Business Partnership.

Nevertheless, business development in the National Park does face challenges – for example, the limited access to high speed broadband and mobile communications services, both of which have become essential requirements for most businesses. Although the availability of high speed broadband has improved substantially in many of the most populated areas, there are still areas of the National Park with poor or no access.

So far the project has yet to select a supplier (this is due imminently) and the new plan doesn’t add much to what we already know, except to say that the network will aim to “achieve more than 30% uptake of high speed broadband.” However we do get this rather useful map of predicted coverage and project focus and given the geography we’d anticipate some sort of partial wireless network.