Broadband Internet History
Martin August 2004
Plockton has enjoyed ADSL broadband internet access since July 2004. Speeds are 512Kb downstream, 256Kb upstream.
Our ISP is Scotnet. Depending on upgrades to Plockton and Kyle exchanges, they are likely to be the only provider in the near future. (Update March 2007: In fact, BT and AOL have also been available.)
We have found their service to be excellent. Speed is full rate {less overheads), with no contention issues. There are no restrictions on usage. Technical support, from Inverness, is first-class.
If you wish to apply, contact Scotnet directly.
Alasdair 21 July 2005
As a result of broadband being installed in many more Highland exchanges, Scotnet have introduced some service and pricing changes.
You are still able to continue with the present system of £25.00 + VAT (£29.38) per month giving you broadband, free domain registration and free webspace.
If you have had your existing contract for a year (the minimum period) you could change to one of their new services.
The home user service will be £19.99 + VAT (£23.48) per month, with email, without the domain and webspace.
Their new business service will be £26.99 + VAT (£31.71) per month, with email (SMTP option), domain and webspace (including CGI) and a static IP option.
Full details are on their website (Exchange Activate button).
Martin July 2004
Broadband ADSL was sucessfully installed. All customers are up and running. The service is excellent.
Alasdair 13 May 2004
I am delighted to let you know the following:
We are definitely booked to have our exchange activation installed in the exchange on July 1st and in our houses by July 8th. We will be the first ones in Skye and Lochalsh to be getting this, and the first exchange in the Highlands (outside the pilot scheme) to be upgraded in this way.
Through the generosity of Hi-Wide, we are also lucky enough to be getting two modules installed instead of just one — that means that we will have the capacity for 60 users to get connected, rather than the 30 that we were restricted to originally. Since we only have around 40 on the list this is great news. I expect a few to be knocking at the door once they see how good it is but there is no pressure on us at present to get the spaces all taken.
Points to note: I still have to get the cost confirmed but it looks like it will be £25.00 plus Vat which comes to £29.38 per month for each of us. That is a couple of pounds less than they quoted originally.
As has been pointed out before, we all have to use Scotnet as our Internet Provider as they are contributing a good few thousand pounds to the cost of installation — therefore we each must use them for our connection. You will get free email and web-space from them as part of the deal, but you may want to keep a relationship with your previous providers to some extent. Web-space is easy to retain — emails are more difficult to arrange, but not impossible. The details of this will be gone through nearer the time.
There will be information sessions held nearer the time to deal with technical and non-technical queries. Meantime come back to me if anything pressing is gnawing away at you.
Scotnet will be contacting you all in the next couple of weeks to get confirmed orders from you — until you sign with them, you are not committed to it, even at this late stage. I will give them your contact details and from then on, it is up to them.
Alasdair 16 April 2004
The exchange will be live on 1 July and clients should be live by the 8th. (Stuart at Scotnet)
Martin 10 March 2004
The first group of 30 have been invited by HIE to apply for the £300 grant.
Alasdair 27 February 2004
It will be limited to the first 30 that expressed an interest in the past. I'll be coming round you all soon to make sure that the list passed on to the providers is still correct and that you will sign up for it. If not, there are 5 or 6 others in the wings ready to take up the offer. I'll let you know as soon as it's all confirmed.
Clarification: re choice of provider. We could have tried to find another ISP willing to take it on but to do so would have postponed any order to BT by a considerable time. Scotnet are also the only ones I know operating in the Highlands who have already operated a similar system.
Fraser MacKenzie (Hi-Wide) 27 February 2004
. . . just to confirm that we have ordered Exchange Activate through Scotnet and that we exect the delivery schedule to be 12–14 weeks. Broadband should therefore arrive in Plockton at the beginning of June.
Fraser MacKenzie (Hi-Wide) 29 January 2004
Apologies for the lack of communication. We are hammering out a few nitty gritty issues regarding which ISPs we can use and the detailed requirements for the HIE grant aid to work smoothly. Hopefully have something concrete to say tomorrow.
The next step will be for us to come to you with a package detailing how the grant works, offering you a limited choice of ISPs to choose to go with and asking people to sign up there and then. The ISP would then place the order with BT to upgrade the exchange.
Hopefully we could do this meeting/sign up session in a few weeks time.
Alasdair 13 January 2004
I have been contacted by Hi-Wide today and they are now in charge of the funds and the detail of getting broadband through Exchange Activation for Plockton — amongst other responsibilities not nearly so interesting to ourselves. They will be working closely with HIE and BT in their preparations for its installation.
They are expecting to finalise the legalities etc in the next two weeks and then to place an order with BT — if all goes well, they think we should have a service by April.
We don't need to do much in the meantime but the next stage will probably be for them to give us a choice of 3 ISPs to be our partner in the exchange activation — this means we will have to decide who we all give our money to each month — and we all have to pick the same one I'm afraid as the ISP will be paying a share of the cost of upgrading the exchange.
I will get in touch with you as soon as this becomes clearer or if they give me any more information.
Hi-Wide are anxious to get 5 exchanges up and running ASAP and we are one of them and may even be the first. So hold on to your hats but be prepared to let go your purse strings (not by too much let's hope).
As soon as I know any more I'll be in touch.
Alasdair 7 November 2003
Further to my last contact on the subject of broadband, our list of committed users is currently standing at 18 out of the 30. We need to start the ball rolling.
To try to stimulate some extra interest and to pass on more information to the rest of you, Skye and Lochalsh Enterprise IT advisor, Alaistar Nicolson is coming to Plockton Hall at 7pm on Tuesday 11 November for about an hour (that's next week) to give us as much details as he can and to whip up some more interest if possible.
One of the things which now appears to be a goer is that all businesses and community organisations can apply for a one-off grant of £300 towards installing broadband in their properties. This would include just about everybody on the list and would mean that the cost of installing the service, the ADSL modem and nearly 6 months rental would be covered. Irresistible, eh?
Please could as many of you as possible turn out to this informal meeting and tell all your friends as well.
Alasdair 29 October 2003
I have been contacted today by Scotnet who wish to provide a broadband service to Plockton. This would be based on the exchange being upgraded rather than using a wireless system which has proved unsuitable.
To get this installed, 30 of us have to agree to spend £26.99 + VAT per month on a service and then we and Scotnet have to apply for funding from HIE to pay for the equipment.
There will also be a one-off £50 activation charge when you first get connected.
It is unlikely to be installed until after April next year due to funding limitations but we have to start now or we will not be ready.
Because it is HIE who are paying the bulk of the costs, they wish us to have a majority of business users in our 30, and obviously B&B is just as much a business as any other.
The other limiting factor is that it has to be done in chunks of 30 — we need 30 but if we get 31 someone will be missed off the list until a vacancy occurs, or until we reach 60 requests. So it will be first come, first served, I'm afraid.
And I'm first, so there. Actually I think that 30 is about the real figure for serious interest in the village, although we have just over 40 registered. But I may be wrong.
I am happy to act as the organiser but I will need to find 30 people who actually do want to register and commit to one year's contract at those prices when the service starts.
Alasdair 1 September 2003
The following was received from Maarten de Vries, Broadband Advisor at HI-WIDE, HIE.
We've recently produced a draft work document detailing the issues around the different types of broadband and where we think they would be most suitably implemented. As a result it has been found that to be able to use wireless broadband in Plockton, because of the way wireless broadband works, we either need to disappoint a high percentage of registrants, or cut down all the trees, neither of which, you may imagine, we are particularly keen to do.
This basically means that the most sensible option for Plockton would be to look at the implementation of Exchange Activate, a cut down version of ADSL. Exchange Activate is now commercially available from BT Wholesale, and we are very busy in trying to find Internet Service Providers that are willing to partner with us. Basically, because of state aid rules, we cannot pay 100% towards the installation of Exchange Activate, and we need to find an ISP who is willing to pay the rest.
Please let me know if you are interested and I'll start the process rolling.
Alasdair 3 July 2003
The latest news is at the HIE Broadband Forum
They are going to put up a news page now and update it every fortnight.
It looks like it will be later in the year than I thought since because of the EU tendering rules they can't award the contracts until October.
I think we should keep encouraging folk to register so that we get Exchange Activation.
Martin Allan: The EU funding rules are very strict. The word is that date slippage means the whole project goes down, and that will not be allowed to happen.
Exchange Activation is standard ADSL by telephone cable, (512Kb down, 256Kb up). The alternative is wireless (at the same speed) but this has technical difficulties in our location, and may not give the best performance.
So anyone who has not yet registered their interest, please do so at the above link. There is no obligation to take up the service, but by registering you help to bring Plockton to the next generation Internet.
More registrations will make the difference between Activated Exchange and wireless.
Alasdair 28 January 2003
Highlands and Islands Enterprise are about to embark on a programme of subsidised upgrading of telephone exchanges to allow folk in the Highlands to access Internet Broadband connections.
This would mean that we would have very fast and always-on connections in Plockton which would be fed out to each of the users that choose to be included.
The first stage in preparing a list of exchanges is to only include those areas where a number of people have registered an interest. You do this at www.hie.co.uk/broadband/registration
Only one submission is possible per customer site. BT will not count multiple submissions. There is no obligation on you at this stage — we just need to get more registrations and at present we are at five.
Can I ask as many of you to register so we get Plockton on the list?
Later on some of us will have to firm up on our requirements but if we don't get a good number of declarations of interest we won't even get the chance later. Any queries, please feel free to contact me
This process has been taking place for a while and we are starting to see some progress. However, exact timescales are difficult to predict in such a situation. Even if Plockton was still on our wireless list, it would not be until early next year until actual works are expected to start.
From the Scotsman, Wednesday 22 January 2003
Broadband Initiative for Highlands
More information and links from the HIE broadband site (as above)
Registration of broadband interest at HIE is primarily for those in the Scottish Highlands and Islands. If you are in a similar situation in rural UK, we suggest that you register your interest directly with BT at their broadband pages.
