Salmon Farming Helps HebNet Extend Faster Broadband in West Scotland

Back in 2018 we reported (here) on how community ISP HebNet CIC had worked with Scottish Sea Farms (SSF) to extend a 30Mbps+ capable Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) broadband network to serve homes near to two Salmon farms on the Isle of Skye and Knoydart in rural Scotland (Highlands). The good news is that this network is being extended.

Just to recap. At the time of the original article, SSF had three Salmon farms around Loch Nevis, and as part of that they also provided 50% of the funding to help deploy the new wireless broadband network. The new network partly benefitted from the fact that these farms needed to deploy upgraded fibre optic data links to help with their own remote monitoring and feeding systems.

The good news is that the ISP has now secured further funding from two salmon producers, including both SSF and MOWI, to support improvements in connectivity (as well as maintenance) and an expanded rollout of the broadband network.

Part of this funding is also needed to help repair the provider’s boat (a 5.5 metre long RIB), which originally helped to cut journey times on the road and reduce reliance on public ferries. But this now needs repairs to maintain its reliability. HebNet has received a total of £8,500 from Mowi and SSF to support this work.

Ian Bolas, HebNet Director in the Small Isles, said:

“The areas we operate in are very challenging. At the moment, we’re putting fibre optic in new locations, including Elgol on Skye and Canna. But one of the biggest challenges we’ve had is getting to these places, often at short notice.”

Colin Kupris, SSF’s IT Operations and Infrastructure Leader, said:

“If it wasn’t for HebNet, we would have great difficulty providing connectivity to the farms in Loch Nevis because it’s a very challenging area – 15 to 30 minutes’ commute by sea – with no other internet or mobile phone coverage.

As well as facilitating daily data updates and generally keeping in touch with the outside world, the service enables remote feeding and monitoring, which ensures fish are fed as and when needed, whatever the weather conditions.”

The provider’s website doesn’t tell us much about their network coverage or packages, but they appear to charge just £15 per month for access (with “no speed or bandwidth cap“) and claim network latency times of around 23ms. An optional phone service can also be added, which we assume is some sort of VoIP product.

However, in extremely remote locations like this, wireless solutions are often the only option due to the extreme cost of deploying an FTTP network, which needs to reach a small number of homes over a very wide and rugged area.