East Lothian entrepreneurs launch community broadband venture
A new community co-operative is pledging to deliver high-speed broadband to parts of Lothian that other providers can't reach.
Lothian Broadband has been set up by East Lothian residents Ian Smith and David Walls to provide next generation broadband to around 500 homes across the community that currently receive little or no service.
The duo were advised by Co-operative Development Scotland and have received a £355,000 grant from the European Community Tyne Esk LEADER 2007-2013 Programme to fund the project.
Smith, a software engineer, and Walls, an educational technologist, plan to extend and upgrade an existing service they set up six years ago to serve 50 homes in the villages of Garvald and Morham. Setting up a new high-speed wireless transceiver on the Garleton Hills north of Haddington – subject to planning permission – will allow them to extend that to the towns of East Linton and Gifford, taking in 500 homes and widening their coverage from 40sq km to 150sq km.
The co-operative will be owned and run by its subscribers, with a proposed community share issue potentially providing capital to expand the service in East Lothian. Ultimately it is hoped to expand the service across the Lothians.
"We were anxious to be a community owned and run project and being a co-operative allows everyone to share in the running of the company," Walls explained. "A community share issue might fund the employment of specialist technical people rather than using consultants and would allow us to expand the service to other parts of Lothian. We've had approaches from other community councils keen to join in the scheme but we're currently not funded to do that. "
Walls said half of Lothian Broadband's subscribers were small businesses or people working for home coping with non-existent or "completely inadequate" download speeds of 1 to 1.5 megabits per second and upload speeds of half a megabit per second – typically a fraction of advertised rates.
CDS, a Scottish Enterprise subsidiary, aims to grow the contribution of co-operative businesses to Scotland's economy across key sectors and provided Lothian Broadband with a specialist consultancy service. This included advice on the co-operative's legal structure, governance and company registration.
"Poor access to broadband is a major issue in many rural locations across Scotland and community co-operatives provide an ideal solution, giving local people shared ownership and control of the services they need," said Sarah Deas, CDS Chief Executive. "It's a business model that can prove vital in rural or remote areas where external investment isn't available – and that's exactly the case for Lothian Broadband. It's great news that people in East Lothian will be able to share the development of such an important service going forward."
Longer term, Walls said Lothian Broadband would be exploring the introduction of 'superfast' broadband using fibre optic technology. The UK government announced last week that rural areas in Scotland would receive almost £70m from a £530m pot to ensure the UK had the fastest broadband network in Europe by 2015.
Lothian Broadband has also received funding from the Scottish Government and Garvald & Morham Community Council.
For more information, please contact Victoria Masterson at The Very People on 07733 301715 or vicky@theverypeople.co.uk.
About CDS
CDS is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Scottish Enterprise set up to grow the contribution of co-operative and employee owned business models to Scotland's economy. CDS supports the remit of Scottish Enterprise, Highlands & Islands Enterprise and Business Gateway. A specific focus is on growth industries, including food and drink, renewable energy, forestry, tourism, textiles and creative industries. Co-operative business models have a major role to play in the growth of these sectors.
Some of Scotland's best-known co-operative and employee owned businesses include Tullis Russell , Loch Fyne Oysters, Highland Home Carers, First Milk, John Lewis Partnership, The Co-operative Group and Scotmid.