Highland Council agrees motions to address concerns about broadband connectivity

Highland Council has today, 27 October, agreed two motions regarding concerns about broadband connectivity.

Highland Council agreed the following motion presented by Councillors Liz MacDonald, Stephen Fuller and George Farlow:

“Highland Council makes representation as a matter of urgency to British Telecom to raise concerns about the method of superfast broadband delivery in rural areas, making the case that it is essential that improvements to the fibre network, including more cabinets, are given the highest priority.

“The cabinets currently being installed by Openreach only permit connection to fibre-optic broadband from homes within a very close vicinity and access is extremely limited by our geography and topography. 

“The Highland Council calls on BT and Openreach to engage with us in order to demonstrate that they are improving their performance and to provide details of how many additional engineers and other staff they will deploy in the Highland Council area in order to provide the super-fast broadband connections across Highland.”

The Council also agreed the following motion put forward by Councillors: Mr A Graham, Ms P Robertson, Ms A MacLean, Mr T Prag Mr J Stone, Dr J Davis

“That this Council expresses its strong concern about the unsatisfactory progress of fibre broadband rollout in some areas of the Highlands as well as the quality of broadband service being received in many cases and, as high speed broadband is an important service for householders and critical for many Highland businesses, will seek an urgent meeting with the UK Government, Scottish Government, Highlands & Islands Enterprise and British Telecom/Openreach to look for solutions to the problems being experienced.”