Ariane Burgess, Scottish Green MSP for the Highlands & Islands region, has raised concerns about the sluggish progress of broadband rollout across rural and island communities.
Latest figures released by Ofcom show stark differences between broadband speeds in urban constituencies when compared to island and rural communities.
In Inverness & Nairn, just 2% of residents (around 1,069 homes) still have broadband download speeds of less than 10 Megabits per second but in Orkney the figure is 17% (2,195) and in Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch it’s 14% – more than 5,000 homes.
Commenting following publication of the figures today, Ms Burgess said:
“The entire approach to broadband rollout has been flawed from the start.
“Private companies have cherry-picked the easiest properties to connect and we’re seeing what was a digital divide open into a yawning chasm.
“In rural and island communities, local economies are being stifled for the lack of even basic provision while those in urban areas have benefitted from full fibre and Gigabit capable provision.
“We need to learn from this experience that we must adopt a rural-first approach to national infrastructure projects.
“Get things right for rural communities first and those systems will also work in urban areas where the private sector is in a position to do more of the heavy lifting.
“Rural communities are right to feel short-changed by a public investment of £1.3bn that has so far failed to connect thousands of them to even the most basic broadband provision.”
