Engineers are starting work to give the historic island of Iona – the cradle of Christianity in Scotland
- an ultrafast broadband tech boost.
A mile off the much bigger Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, Iona has been in history books since St
Columba established a monastery there in the sixth century.
It’s now on course for a 21 st century future, with full fibre broadband being made available to every
home and business on the island.
The technology – offering some of the fastest, most reliable broadband in Europe - will transform
connectivity for the 170 residents, seasonal workers who swell the population in the summer and
more than 100,000 pilgrims and tourists who visit each year.
- an ultrafast broadband tech boost.
A mile off the much bigger Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, Iona has been in history books since St
Columba established a monastery there in the sixth century.
It’s now on course for a 21 st century future, with full fibre broadband being made available to every
home and business on the island.
The technology – offering some of the fastest, most reliable broadband in Europe - will transform
connectivity for the 170 residents, seasonal workers who swell the population in the summer and
more than 100,000 pilgrims and tourists who visit each year.
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NewsTranscript
00:00In order to build the R100 contract, which is spanning right across Scotland, right from
00:08the top of Shetland down to Stranraer, we're consistently having to innovate and find new
00:12ways to build networks.
00:13So out here where we are today in Iona, there was quite a distance back to where the signal
00:18originates from in Tobermory.
00:20So we're using a new technology where we're basically taking some of the equipment we'd
00:23normally be inside an exchange, we're putting that on the street and that is boosting the
00:27signal to allow us to get all the distance from Tobermory out to Iona.
00:32It's a key driver within the Scottish Government that we ensure that every property in Scotland
00:37can access fast broadband.
00:40And it shouldn't matter where you live, that shouldn't have any impact on whether or not
00:45we can connect you or not.
00:47And what we're really doing through the R100 programme is we're really driving that fibre
00:51broadband to the areas that need it the most.
00:53We're prioritising rural communities, island communities, those communities that have the
00:57slowest broadband speeds now, to really give them a broadband connection which is fit not
01:03just for the 21st century, but actually it's a lifetime infrastructure upgrade, it really
01:08will be transformational.
01:09The island here is populated as a real mixed bag, we've everything from fishing, farming,
01:15tourism, hospitality, we've got artists, folk, we've got bookbinders, crafts people,
01:23silversmiths, it's such an amazing group that we've got together here.
01:28The population is only about, well just over 170 people, which in the summer can go up
01:33to about 250, we've got seasonal staff that come and help meet the hospitality needs.
01:38So across the season Iona sees over 100,000 visitors, which is a huge amount.
01:43I think just getting broadband was life changing probably, for a community like ours it does
01:49mean that you can continue to live here, you can continue to have a viable community because
01:54otherwise if you can't do things like banking, life is virtually impossible the way things
02:00are set up in the world these days.
02:03Everyone as far as I know is very keen to have it happen, very excited.
02:08We are incredibly lucky to be one of the few sites in Scotland that is a breeding ground
02:13for corn creek, as well as obviously all the archaeological importance here.
02:18So it's been hugely important working alongside the engineers to make sure that we're working
02:22around breeding seasons, we're not going to be causing any disturbance, ensuring we've
02:26got archaeological monitoring, but also the opportunity of having any finds that might
02:32be found along the way within that survey, so it's great actually, it's been really great.
02:37Everyone's really excited about what's going to come, if you look back to what we've done
02:40in Fair Isle, that school is now able to communicate right through the school network
02:46and do remote learning and all sorts of things it wasn't able to do before because the network
02:49simply wasn't capable, so it's genuinely a transformational programme what we're doing
02:54and it's a real privilege to be able to bring this service to the communities.