In August 2001 - Scottish broadband coverage as a result of the private sector's commercial investment was just 43% - compared to 63% in the UK. The Scottish Executive's Broadband Strategy was launched; its aim was for pervasive and affordable broadband in Scotland.
Initial action was to stimulate the market through awareness raising and encouraging business take-up. This improved broadband take-up levels and also led to a large increase in registrations in trigger schemes set by BT to secure coverage to around 97%.
In June 2004, a target of affordable broadband to every community by the end of 2005 was set - reflecting the need to deliver to rural and remote areas where broadband was still unavailable. This was achieved by a Supply-Side Intervention - the Broadband for Scotland project.
In this project, a contract was awarded to BT (following an open procurement) to upgrade 378 Scottish non-commercial telephone exchange areas to provide broadband.
see list of the exchanges enabled in our intervention
As a result of successful implementation, we delivered our commitment to bring Broadband to every Scottish community by the end of 2005.
The "Reach" Issue
After working with independent consultants on the 'Out of Reach' issue, the Executive published its report which gave valuable information on the extent and nature of the reach problem as well as the viability of potential solutions. This report is available online at the following link: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/161597.
Furthermore, an additional £3.5 million was made available for further activity to deliver broadband to those without coverage. In May 2007 an industry event was held in Glasgow and was well-attended. Its purpose was to discuss the practicalities of delivering broadband access to those currently out of reach. Over 30 companies/organisations were present at the meeting. These include potential suppliers and other interested bodies. Following this, two further events were held in Glasgow and Inverness for people affected by the Reach problem. These meetings were also well-attended, with over 70 (invited) participants, representing over 40 of the larger out of reach clusters known to the Government, present.
The options around the delivery of alternative broadband solutions (e.g. small wireless networks) were explored in detail, it now having been established that there will be no BT solutions to the reach problem.
There was divided support amongst participants for both funding models, with a slight preference for community grants.
Why was Procurement chosen?
The Scottish Government considered that a procurement approach represented the best mechanism available to try to achieve its objective of delivering an affordable and sustainable broadband solution, to all who have made us aware of their demand.
Unlike a community grant model, for example, there would be no requirement on individual clusters to own and manage their individual solutions. Furthermore, a community grant model was unlikely to be sustainable in clusters, where there are only a small number of customers - of which there are many in Scotland,
It was also essential for us to consider the wishes of the industry, who showed a strong preference to a procurement over community grants.
The Procurement Exercise
This commenced in October 2007 and attracted 20 companies who expressed an early interest. After much consideration, this was shortened to 8 organisations in December 2007 who were invited to provide a comprehensive response to our Request for Proposal. On receipt of these submissions, a short list was drawn up of 4 companies and detailed discussions were held in order to ascertain who could best deliver to all registrants on the Reach database.
Marketing Campaign
A marketing campaign was carried out involving local and national press, radio and advertising aimed at narrow band internet users to raise awareness of the project and offer support to as many people in Scotland as possible affected by the Reach issue. There was a massive response to this which resulted in trebling the registrants held.