In Cowal, Councillor's Ron Simon's arguement  laid out in ForArgyll points to a superfast broadbandsystem Pathfinder North already installed at taxpayers expense, which should have been available well before now to  business and domestic users by subscription – but is not. [Something similar has happenedwith FibreSpeed network in Wales  and it might be tempting to wonder if BT had 'got' at it potential competion quite effectively.]

Delivering on promised access to this system would give those who want it superfast broadband quite quickly and would leave the modest funding  now available to address the needs of those located beyond its reach.

Simon now callls for Argyll and Bute – in particular Cowal – to be considered a priority in the allocation this £68.8m. He start noting the total amount available is inadequate for the job. It would cost an estimated £300m just to upgrade the Highlands and Islands region.

Councillor Simon says: ‘I am determined that the rural villages of Cowal should not miss out and I have written to the Cabinet Secretary, Alex Neil to ask him how we can be proactive in securing our share of the funding available; and requesting that he consider Cowal a priority when apportioning the cash.
‘It is vital that for us to be competitive and connected that we secure superfast broadband, this funding may be the opportunity we have been waiting for as it is unlikely that the private sector will invest in rural Communities such as ours.

‘This is one of many actions we need to take towards our vision of encouraging rural business and population growth so it is crucial that we strive to secure a share of this infrastructure investment.’

The Pathfinder North stasis
Regardless of the inadequate funding available for broadband upgrading, there is something that Councillor Simon and his fellow councillors across Argyll and Bute Council, regardless of whether they are administration or the opposition – must do now to help superfast broadband availability here.

A few years ago, funded by the taxpayer, every Scottish local authority in the Highlands and Islands was given a superfast broadband system through various system installations under an overall scheme called Pathfinder North. whose members are:

• Argyll and Bute Council
• Highland Council
• Moray Council
• Orkney Islands Council
• Shetland Islands Council

This provides superfast broadband access for council members and staff and for the spectrum of public sector and third sector organisations that are part of the local authority network as well as providing for JANET and the University networks.

The current broadband funding issues and allocations are being ignored by JANET where the latest release is dated Highlands and Islands Enterprise [Wednesday 20 October 2010) and welcomes the news that its bid for UK Government funding to deliver superfast broadband in some of Scotland’s most rural areas had met with success. HIE Chief Executive Alex Paterson said he was delighted that the strengths of the Highlands and Islands’ case for funding."

Public reassurances were given by the Scottish Government  at the time of Pathfinder North start-up  – one recorded as evidence by The Kinthre Forum – that business and domestic users would be given access to this system through commercial partners and by subscription in the usual way.

The Scottish Government then remains the Scottish Government now, so there should be no problem in shifts of authority and inherited promises. Partners in question were Cable and Wireless – the overall contractor for the Pathfinder North initiative; and, for commercial implementation, C&W’s retail subsidiary, Thus.

But back in 2005, Cable & Wireless'  Francesco Caio has warned BT that the industry remained sceptical about its plans to open up the telecoms network to rival operators. BT had  launched Openreach in September in response to criticism that it was restricting access to local telephone exchanges - the 'local loop'. 

The capacity is already here to provide access, quicker than by any other way, to reasonable speed broadband for Argyll and Bute, as for every other local authority area in the Highlands and Islands.
The rollout of Pathfinder North was announced ‘complete’ on Monday 21st December 2009.

A year later, on Wednesday 20th  October 2010, Highlands and Islands Enterprise welcomed the news that its bid for UK Government funding to deliver superfast broadband in some of Scotland’s most rural areas had met with success. This was the money finally announced by Broadband Delivery UK almost a year after that, on Friday 16th August 2011.

But what of the subscription access to the Pathfinder North network – which was installed, which was paid for and which has still not been made commercially available to us, as promised, almost two years after the system was completed?

We have made enquiries since Easter 2010,  on the promised progress for this necessary and deliverable service – and met nothing but obfuscation. Cable and Wireless,  parent contractor for the system delivery, makes the excuse that Thus is an independent commercial subsidiary for whose work they cannot answer. And Thus had no knowledge of any forthcoming service.

The Scottish Government understandably referred us to their commercial partners.

FREEING UP SCARCE FUNDING
We are returning now to make yet another series of enquiries on this matter – and this time we are calling formally for formal engagement in the issue of both MSP’s responsible for the territory under the authority of Argyll and Bute Councjl: Michael Russell, SNP member for Argyll and Bute; and Jackie Baillie, Labour MSP for Dumbarton.

People in all parts of Argyll are urged to call for their local councillors to take action to get access to the system they enjoy at our expense opened up to the rest of us, on a pay-for basis, as it was promised.

This single action will improve the service available by subscription to many of us, by using an already installed system supposed to fulfill this very function and freeing the slender amount of new money now available to help those beyond this sort of access.

CABLE & WIRELESS & THUS ACCOUNTABILITY
The short answer to this is that they make sure to obstruct access to themselves. There is no telephone access, nor an identification of a communications or media team on either of their websites.

So looking at the Cable and Wireless Glasgow HQ on Google Maps ForArgyll found a phone number for them (01603 [not the Glasgow code] 820507).This turned out to be some sort of utterly unintelligible security service – which eventually gave us a number for C&W: 0141 2702706.

This was switched through to an unidentified mobile which remained unanswered but eventually offered a messaging service. Will they get back to us with our request for a phone number for the Thus Communications team? We’ll report back on this here.

It is utterly unacceptable for a major government contractor not to be accessible by a publicly advertised telephone number.It is equally unacceptable for a private sector commercial service offering a key utility, such as Thus, not to make itself available by phone. 

ComputeScotland discovers however that if ForArgyll was using the ultrafast webservice it cannot probably reach they would find Ingenious Britain and lots of promised talk and even a communities sector.

THUS