Dear All, First, please note that after many frustrations with the service, I have discontinued my landline. If anyone wants to ring me, please use my mobile number: . Apologies for not writing sooner to keep you all informed, but, after multiple delays, setbacks, and disappointments, it is only now that I have any good news to bring, which is that, as of now, most or all of Shinness have available two or three alternative ways to improve upon the slow landline broadband speeds blighting the area. 1) FTTC / FTTP To deal first with the simplest but most limited, you may recall that previously we were trying to get Fibre-To-The Cabinet (FTTC) broadband available across Shinness. The good news is that a new FTTC cabinet, number 6, has been installed at the junction between the A838 and Tirryside, and for some time has been live and online, and anyone who lives within 2km, about 1.2mi, intervening roadside distance from the cabinet should be able to benefit from it. To get connected, a subscriber can simply request FTTC from their current ISP, but it's worth noting that, if a householder is prepared to shop around, a FTTC deal that is about the same or even a little less than their current ADSL deal *may* be available from a different supplier. Note 1: I've been told by one household close to the new cabinet that since it was installed their broadband is much better, and therefore they haven't bothered to investigate actually getting switched over to FTTC, but whether that is a general improvement or is just specific to them, I don't know - it could be that, besides installing the fibre, OpenReach replaced some or all of the copper cabling linking the cabinet back to Lairg, and thereby removed a great many faults which were reducing the quality of service to us, but this is merely a guess on my part, I don't have any hard information. Note 2: When we first started this campaign to try and improve the local service, all Shinness premises were on Exchange Only (EO) lines. Then, when Lairg was supplied with FTTC, most Shinness lines were re-routed via Cabinet 4, which was then the nearest cabinet to us, on the junction below Lockharts at the sharp bend around the end of the loch. When I last checked a month or two ago using this checker site ... https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL ... most of the local numbers that I know of had been moved to the new cabinet, Cabinet 6. However, the households whose last four digits are as below are still connected differently, and may wish to investigate why this is so and perhaps request that this be corrected, because, as per Note 1, even if they are too far away to get FTTC, it may still result in a slight improvement to their current ADSL service. Also, others who have not given me their phone number may wish to use the checker site above to check their number. Cabinet 1: [redacted] (I have no idea why this one number is connected differently to all the others!) Cabinet 4: [redacted] Exchange: [redacted] However, the rest of us living further away from the new cabinet are not going to be helped significantly by this, not now nor in the foreseeable future, because for 'operational reasons' OpenReach have refused to consider the FTTC plan we submitted for the rest of Shinness. Instead, they have offered us a community funded plan to bring Fiber-To-The-Premises (FTTP) to each of the premises that previously expressed an interest in having improved broadband, but the cost to each of the 50 remaining premises is approximately £5,800, of which £1,500 for residential premises and £3,500 for business premises can be claimed back from the government, the total cost to the community being about £290,000 less the above mentioned government grants. Therefore, unless we can find external funding from somewhere like a wind farm, for now at best this looks very much like something for the back-burner. However, now we have two viable and affordable alternatives ... 2) Highland Wireless (HW) I am very pleased to report that Cameron Warren, trading as Highland Wireless, in liaison with The Lairg & District Community Initiatives, has set up an affordable wireless broadband scheme covering all of Shinness. Cameron tells me that he has sent information explaining the service to every home within coverage, which householders should receive around the same time as they receive this, but if it should happen that you do not receive a leaflet, the bare details are as follows: Coverage is available now, in fact from yesterday, as shown here ... https://www.highlandwireless.co.uk/coverage/ Upon request, and for a fee most of which most probably can be waived by getting a voucher in advance from the government here (for the procedure to follow, click "How do the vouchers work?" down the page a little) ... https://basicbroadband.culture.gov.uk/ PLEASE NOTE: THIS SCHEME WILL CLOSE FOR NEW VOUCHER REQUESTS AT NOON ON 29 NOVEMBER, so you must move fast if you want to save yourself the installation fee for this service! PLEASE NOTE: In the New Year HW will be introducing a new pricing Tariff in place of the government grant. However it would still be advisable to make use of the government grant before 29th November. ... HW will install a receiver somewhere on your premises that has line of sight to the transmitter the other side of the loch. The cost of the monthly plans are given here ... https://www.highlandwireless.co.uk/plans/ ... but basically it's £33pcm for unlimited access at up to 50Mbps up and 20Mbps down. If you do not qualify for the Better Broadband Scheme vouchers mentioned above - I can't imagine that many, if any, in Shinness will be getting greater than the 2Mbps qualification threshold - then you can spread the £300 cost of installation by paying more per month over the first year. Also HW provides a telephone service which means that, should you wish, you can dispense with your land-line altogether. Additional prices are here: https://www.highlandwireless.co.uk/phones/ 3) 4G Mobile Services Although coverage is patchy, most areas of Shinness can now get a reasonable 4G mobile service, which they can use for internet access. This is what I have done, discontinuing my landline altogether. However, I was fortunate in happening to spot a good plan that was offered for a limited time from my supplier, and while hopefully some of you may similarly be able to find a plan that suits you from your current supplier, most mobile plans are prohibitively expensive when considered as a replacement for the sort of usage that nowadays a landline is expected to provide - recent Ofcom figures show that the average family download rate is about 190GB per month. Accordingly I have emailed or written to all mobile suppliers as below copying Ofcom, and will copy local parliamentary representatives after the election, challenging suppliers to provide a plan that rivals the one that I am on. I have yet to hear anything positive back, but it's still very early days. In the meantime, if you can get a decent signal and a decent plan, then in my experience 4G is certainly another viable alternative. As far as the future goes, I don't think OpenReach will ever voluntarily do anything either to maintain the existing local infrastructure adequately, for example by burying properly the many joins and lengths of cable left exposed on the surface where they are vulnerable to physical damage and water ingress, let alone give further access to FTTC within the area. It is possible that HIE might do something if they get another round of funding from the Scottish government, but they may consider that, now that we have the alternatives above, other areas with no such alternatives are more deserving, and anyway the plan that we originally proposed involves recabling some parts of the area, and OpenReach would probably refuse to do this. So, while we should always keep an eye open for opportunities that may be presented of improving local infrastructure, I believe the above is the best we can realistically hope for in the immediate future, and for those that consider their landline service inadequate to their needs, my advice would be to choose one of the above alternatives. I hope very much that the above will be considered welcome news to you all, but, at any rate, I don't think that, for the present as a private individual, I can hope to accomplish much more. Regards, Charles Macfarlane. Copy: Ofcom Mobile SIM Plans - Data 4 November, 2019 Dear Sir/Madam, Although unelected, I represent particularly some 65 households scattered along the north-east shore of Loch Shin, north of Lairg in Sutherland, Scotland. However more generally, I know that the problem I am addressing is of vital concern to rural households throughout the entire UK. Our problem is that, although houses nearest to the exchange at last can get FTTC, for the rest land-line broadband service is terrible with no prospect of improvement. The farthest households out are 12kms from the exchange and can not get ADSL at all, while those too far out for FTTC but able to get ADSL, get maximum speeds of only around 1.5-2 Mbps. Further, despite many complaints, the infrastructure suffers from terminal neglect - major joins in the cables, where ditch clearance or verge trimming have cut them, remain on the surface without ever being re-buried, leaving them vulnerable to water penetration and further physical damage. Thus the service is not just slow but also unreliable. However, 4G has arrived recently, and, although coverage is patchy, many, including myself, have now dispensed with our land-lines altogether and only have a mobile service. I now get speeds of around 20Mbps and unlimited usage for less than I was originally paying for my land-line broadband! However, although I personally am on a very good deal from my supplier because I chanced upon it during the month it was being offered, looking over the plans available from mobile operators generally, they do not encourage rural householders to change to a mobile-only service. In particular, few offer realistic charges for the usage that a land-line would normally provide. I believe monthly broadband usage in the UK is currently around 190GB/month, and most mobile data deals that would allow that sort of usage, let alone unlimited, are prohibitively expensive. Another problem is the lack of mobile/4G routers available. Mine is a BT Home Hub 5a, which I have hacked with an OpenWRT build, with a 4G mobile dongle in the USB socket, but obviously this is an option only for the technically knowledgeable, not for the average householder! On behalf all UK rural users generally and Shinness households particularly, I write to request that yourselves, as a mobile supplier in the UK, provide a mobile data SIM plan that will: • Allow at least 200GB but preferably unlimited usage; • Cost not more than around £25pm; • Not be a one-off offer which disappears from your website after a short period of time; • Not be price-hiked on expiration of contract, forcing the customer to renegotiate annually; • Only be subject to yearly increases by the rate of inflation; • Optionally supply a suitable router at extra cost, with a choice either to pay for it either fully up front or else spread over the first year of contract, the latter automatically reverting to a SIM-only contract once the router has been paid for. This is pretty much the deal that I have from my current supplier, and I see no reason why something similar shouldn't be more generally available on a permanent basis across all mobile suppliers. Yours faithfully, Charles Macfarlane.