Broadband to boost tourism

David O'Leary • Published 30 Dec 2011 09:30 Comments 1 Comment

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INNERLEITHEN's soon-to-be-installed superfast broadband upgrade will provide a real boon for local tourism and business.

This is the claim of campaigner Brian McCrow, from Cardrona, who was instrumental to the town winning the BT Race to Infinity competition in which communities voted to be the next area to have their online connectivity upgraded.

After being named as one of six winners across Britain in January, work is due to be completed by March - and local community councillor Brian believes it will greatly help in attracting people to the area.

The 68-year old said: "It's going to be good for our tourism, which is fishing, golfing and biking, especially mountain biking as we hold large competitions in the surrounding high areas. The new network will allow us to promote the area and events and encourage people to come to us.

"It's all about fast communication now and we can now provide that so people can use their fancy phones and iPads while still enjoying the scenery and remote cycling tracks and things.

"It will also lead to us growing jobs, which is a big thing because there have been some recent closures affecting employment.

"Many people who live in Innerleithen commute to the central belt, but that can be difficult when the weather is bad. A high-speed internet connection gives more people the opportunity to work from home.

"That can too benefit the green economy and give a better quality of life, with people spending more time at home with family."

BT has said that Innerleithen will become the "best connected place in Scotland" once the upgrade is completed.

The community will benefit from fibre to the cabinet (fttc) and fibre to the premises (fttp) broadband, giving optimum speeds to homes and businesses.

Officials from the communications company visited the town last month to unveil the details of the improvements.

James McClafferty, BT Scotland partnerships director, said: "Having bandwidth has been a challenge in rural communities, and I think they worry there is a chance they might fall behind big metropolitan areas and cities, but I suppose Innerleithen has bucked that trend."

Unfortunately not all in Innerleithen will reap the benefits as 12 remote properties or 0.6 per cent of the town population's are beyond the technical reach of the super fast technology.

A BT spokeswoman said: "The 0.6 per cent equates to a large rural area of approximately 40 square kilometres at the far northern end of Innerleithen, which are currently beyond the technical limits of super-fast broadband technology - it is not possible to achieve a working service there using our existing technologies.

"Our aim is to ensure that as many people as possible will get fibre on an exchange, but technical limitations apply to any exchange area being upgraded. Openreach is working on alternative solutions to overcome technical challenges, including those in particularly rural and remote locations."

This article appeared in Peeblesshire News 30 Dec 11

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TavistockSFBroadband
Unregistered User
Dec 30, 19:49
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The BT Race To Infinity 2010 was weighted towards small exchanges, that of just over 1000 Subscribers. Because it would be possible over 3 Months to engage with everyone.

The only advantage to the small exchanges that won was that it can be seen that BT Group, BT Openreach can deliver if they wish to small exchanges. Cornwall is another example of this.

Please enjoy as I must with 1.9 Mbps for an unknown period of time. No funding, no favours for the Town, Tavistock that was the largest exchange in the highest position at 17th. We may as well have been last... (2,495th)

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