| 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. |
| There is a full account of how Plockton achieved
broadband here. |
| Update from Alasdair on
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). |
| Update from
Martin July 2004 |
| Broadband ADSL was sucessfully installed.
All customers are up and running. The service is excellent. |
| Update from
Alasdair on 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. |
| This also means that we don't get the benefit of cheaper deals like
£15.99 and £19.99 per month which you will see advertised
nationally. If we ever get our exchange uprated to full ADSL after
Kyle has been done, we can then have all those choices but we are
fortunate to be getting this at all and so we cannot get it at city
rates. |
| 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. |
| Update from
Alasdair on 16 April 2004 |
| The exchange will be live on July 1st and clients
should be live by the 8th. (Stuart at Scotnet) |
| Update from
Martin on 10 March 2004 |
| The first group of 30 have been invited by HIE to
apply for the £300 grant. |
| Update from
Alasdair on 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. |
| Update from
Fraser MacKenzie (Hi-Wide) on 27 February: |
| . . . 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. |
| Update from
Fraser MacKenzie (Hi-Wide) on 29 January: |
| 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. |
| Update from
Alasdair on 13 January: |
| 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. |
| Update from
Alasdair on 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. |
| Update from
Alasdair on 29 October: |
| 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. |
| Update from
Alasdair on 1 September: |
| 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. |
| Update from
Alasdair on 3 July: |
| The latest news is at 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 Bruce
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. |
