The £70million Pathfinder North scheme, which began in May 2007 and is part-funded by the Scottish Government, aims to implement a future-proof high-speed broadband network, provided by Cable&Wireless business, THUS, across 5 local authorities in the Highlands & Islands.
Argyll and Bute is now the first Council area to be fully connected under the Pathfinder initiative.The last site in its territory, Skipness Primary School, was connected last Wednesday (December 2nd).
There are now 146 locations across the authority – including all schools, libraries and office sites – all benefiting from high speed broadband. This bandwidth provided is not regular but is never less than 8MB. It runs from 8MB up to a staggering 300 MB, with the largest data centres, like the Council HQ at Kilmory in Lochgilphead and its offices in Helensburgh, having the largest bandwidth.
Argyll and Bute is the first fully connected authority of the partnership of five local authoritiesinvovled in Pathfinder North. The others are Highland, Moray, Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands.
Not unnaturally, Council Leader, Dick Walsh, is delighted to see Argyll & Bute cross the line in the lead – a pioneer Pathfinder, in fact – and sees the whole initiative as a great success. He says: ‘This was one of the largest telecoms build projects in the UK, and we are delighted to be the first area to benefit from it fully.
‘Pathfinder North not only provides our key sites with high bandwidth Internet access, but will also connect us with 654 other locations across the Highlands and Islands.
‘We can now run very advanced computer software applications, interactive service provision to the public and multimedia-rich education applications to enhance the traditional learning environment in schools.
‘In addition, it allows all schools in Argyll and Bute to connect to GLOW, the national schools’ intranet which promises to transform the way education is delivered in Scotland.
‘We are very proud to be the first local authority to be fully connected and we look forward to continuing to use the technology now available to us in an innovative and exciting way, for the benefit of everyone in Argyll and Bute’.
For long deprived Council Internet users, maybe this means they will now be able to see images as well as text. The culture shock will be immense.
Well, that’s great news for Argyll & Bute Council’s schools, libraries and offices.
But what about businesses, organisations and individuals in the county of Argyll who are barely able to get an intermittent 0.5 MB speed broadband connection, and that only when the clouds aren’t blocking the signal ? How about A&BC getting to work on that…
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What’s the point,
every time I speak to the council or a local school they tell me to wait until the next day when they can go home and check it on their own home Internet connection as the council firewall is impregnable. They don’t even get access to For Argyll, their own local Argyll news service. Where’s the security in that? Perhaps this is why they are so out of touch in Kilmory?
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