Achnasheen set for 'ultrafast' internet

FRUSTRATED residents of a remote Ross-shire community fed up with painfully slow internet access will soon be enjoying ultrafast broadband 2000 times faster than what they currently endure.

Around 140 homes stretching from Achnasheen to Aultguish in Ross-shire will be upgraded to ultrafast technology by the end of this year.

Around two-thirds of the properties will receive future proof fibre-to-the-premises from the £428 million Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme with the rest getting a full-fibre upgrade through a partnership with Openreach.

Homes in tiny settlements and hamlets like Achanalt, Lochluichart, Corriemoillie, Little Garve, Gorstan, Grudie and Inchbae will see their broadband reliability, capacity and speeds soar from around 0.5Mbps to the UK’s fastest residential speeds of up to 1Gbps

The project follows a year of research by the voluntary group Garve and District Broadband (GDB), which looked at all the options for delivering broadband in the location and concluded that a resilient, full-fibre network was the only way forward.

The technology provides additional capacity for data-hungry services and applications and adds more reliability and resilience to the network to cope with unforeseen circumstances or extreme weather conditions.

Substantial wind farm community benefit funds will be invested by the Lochluichart Community Trust alongside funding from Openreach, Scotland’s digital network business; the Digital Scotland project; and the UK Government’s Better Broadband scheme. Local residents are digging in the last few metres of cable to more than 35 per cent of the properties.

Community spokesman Steve Jones said: "It’s a tremendously exciting time. Like many residents I’ve only been getting very slow speeds capped at 0.5Mbps, making even the most basic of online activities difficult and frustrating, so looking forward to ultrafast speeds is fantastic.

"Fast, reliable broadband will bring huge potential to regenerate our scattered communities. It’s a prerequisite for attracting families and businesses to the area, where the population has fallen in recent years. People now expect good internet as a basic. In essence, it will help us to build a closer and more integrated community."

Lesley Negri, who runs the historic Aultguish Inn near Garve with her husband Dario, added: "It will make a huge difference to us, especially for our booking system and payments.

"At the moment everything slows down from 4pm and we can’t manage customer expectations. Many of our customers want to stream things or download photographs and it’s impossible to do that at the moment. We’ve lived with slow broadband for so long that we can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when we can access ultrafast speeds!"