Scottish Government Look to Improve Broadband Mapping Tech

The Scottish Government appears to be in the process of enhancing their mapping technology for the £579m Reaching 100% (R100) project, which could boost “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) coverage in rural areas by making it easier for ISPs to identify homes that aren’t connected to such a service and are thus eligible for vouchers.

Just to recap. The R100 programme has awarded three major deployment contracts to Openreach (BT), which is predominantly rolling out gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) and a tiny bit of slower Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology to cover those in the final 5-6% of poorly served rural premises (around 120,000 extra premises).

On top of that the Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme (SBVS) is being offered as somewhat of a backup, which provides vouchers worth up to £5,000 to connect those properties for which there is no roll-out of superfast broadband planned (rising to £6,500 for homes with a top-up from the UK scheme and £8,500 for businesses).

Alongside this there’s also the option of smaller “interim vouchers” worth up to £400, which are being made available to premises where 30Mbps+ is planned for, but not until after the end of 2021 – with an additional £250 for those in the hardest-to-reach areas (this is partly intended to help cover for the LOT 1 delays).

The SG now appear to be adopting a cloud-based Geographic Information System (GIS) developed and hosted by thinkWhere, which is better able to identify properties that are not currently connected to superfast broadband. Such properties are thus eligible for vouchers to contribute to the capital cost of connection on behalf of community groups or individual premises.

A Spokesperson for the Digital Connectivity Division of the SG said:

“The interactive data portal, complete with mapping element, developed by thinkWhere is designed to encourage small broadband providers to connect eligible addresses in their local area. By displaying addresses on a map, and by making the underlying information for these addresses available to download, we hope to boost take up of the Voucher Scheme and therefore achieve our ambitions of 100 percent connectivity.

Working closely with thinkWhere we have been able to create a solution that is familiar and easy to use. This included the overall look and feel of the interactive map as well as the technical functionality which had to be robust enough to include all our ‘asks’ but not so complicated that it would confuse the end user.”

Apparently, users (e.g. ISPs and the SG) of this system will be able to either view the premises on a map and select those in a given area of interest, or they can query the dataset by postcode or local authority area. For the selected premises, users can then export details including full address, geographical co-ordinates and other information.

Systems similar to this one are already being used elsewhere in the UK for various broadband projects, so it may be better to view this one as more of an upgrade to what the SG were using before.