Balquhidder Community Broadband ISP Project Scoops Rural Award

The Balquhidder Community Broadband (CIC) project, which with support from UK ISP Bogons and the Stirling Council has begun building its own 1Gbps FTTP broadband network in a remote part of Scotland, has successfully won the Scottish Rural Action (SRA) Transport & Infrastructure Award for 2018.

The deployment started earlier this year with the community of Balquhidder (here and here), including some 190 properties in Balquhidder, Ballimore and Kirkton glens, in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park. Progress so far has “been incremental” and to date 25/32 km of core fibre has been laid with 60 premises already connected (the remainder are scheduled for connection at the end of 2018).

According to the SRA, “The publicity that the project has received has resulted in people now choosing to move to Balquhidder, a local developer who has struggled for years to sell his plots has recently sold four because of the location and world-class fibre broadband in the area. The economic uplift model created by the community for the project suggests an annual trading uplift of €1M.”

Suffice to say that BCB’s hard work has now been recognised by the SRA, which has praised them and several others for being “outstanding examples of rural innovation.”

Emma Cooper, Chief Executive of Scottish Rural Action, said:

“The Rural Innovators Awards are incredibly inspirational and showcase just some of the amazing work led by communities in rural Scotland.

More than two and a half thousand people voted to select the winners, and we are delighted with the quality of the submissions and the impact achieved by each of the winners in the five categories.

Each one of these projects demonstrate how communities can take action to address the challenges and opportunities their particular communities face, they are all outstanding examples of rural community empowerment. I’d like to congratulate all of the finalists and the winners for their wider achievements for their communities, as well as for their well-deserved Rural Innovators Awards.”

BCB will now receive a fully funded place at the Scottish Rural Parliament, where they will present their project to hundreds of delegates representing communities, organisations and public agencies from across Scotland. Surely the ideal place to pitch the many advantages of a community supported Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network. Nice work.