Earlier in week, I said a Scottish Tory MP was talking nonsense on broadband delivery. In the interests of informed debate on an important issue, I thought I’d set out some key facts. This is the first chance I’ve had, so here follows a short thread...
1/ Scotland is on track to meet our target of 95% of premises having fibre broadband access by end 2017. If we’d left it to the market, only 66% would have access...
2/ to get to 95%, the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme was established. More of the public funding for this programme comes from the Scottish Government, Highlands & Islands Enterprise and Scottish councils than from the UK government...
3/ the most recent OfCom State of the Nation report shows that in the last year, Scotland made faster progress in broadband roll out than other UK nations - 14% in Scotland compared to 7% in rest of UK. ..
4/ Scotland’s new target to deliver superfast broadband to 100% of residential and business premises by 2021 is more ambitious than the UK government’s equivalent commitment...
5/ in Scotland, our 100% commitment is to speeds of 30mbps, delivered through significant @scotgov funding. In rUK, commitment is to speeds of only 10mbps, funded by higher access charges not public funding...
6/ so work to do, but good @scotgov delivery/commitment on an issue of huge importance to people across the country.
