Residents and businesses of two small remote Shetland Island communities, Vidlin and Fetlar, will be pleased to learn that their local Island council has put £100,000 into deploying a three year pilot wireless (Wi-Fi) broadband service.

The service, which aims to go live this summer, will offer minimum speeds of at least 2Mbps. It's understood that the move is at least partly born out of frustration with BT's past inability to deploy a reliable ADSL based broadband service in the area (original news).

The Shetland News reports that some of the capacity for this new service will come from the regions existing Pathfinder project. Under Pathfinder THUS (C&W) is responsible for providing speeds of over 10Mbps to schools, libraries and other council buildings throughout the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

It's understood that a number of public meetings are being planned to discuss the project, which is initially expected to be taken up by 70 households and businesses. That's not a lot of clients for such a big investment but hopefully it will grow.