Wonderful to join Jamie from Briskona Broadband at their new broadband mast in Kilbride, north of Doune. This mast, supported by the local community, will cover 200 rural homes with satellite broadband.
Argaty and Kilbryde residents have struggled for years with very slow broadband speeds. With support from officers at Stirling Council, members of the community formed into a project group to progress a solution. They met with Briskona’s Director Jamie Parsons, and developed a plan to install a small off-grid Mast connecting the communities of Argaty and Kilbryde. Financial contributions by Briskona (£9000) and Stirling Council (£19,000) were needed to install the wireless Broadband infrastructure. Residents from the 10th of January were able to sign up and finally get a reliable broadband service with download speeds of up to 50mb from local transmitters powered by Solar and Wind using the latest generation of Fixed Wireless Technologies.
Twenty Properties are already connected with capacity available for up to 200 homes and businesses to have access to the service that delivers a 50mbps service.
I am meeting Jeremy Wright, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, next week to discuss Broadband projects in the Stirling area and raise proposals to improve the system in place for companies such as Briskona to claim payments to support installations that is available from UK Governments voucher schemes.
High quality wireless broadband is a serious option for many and often the only one available for areas where other technologies are not being used. Briskona are doing excellent work out here in rural Stirling getting people connected to a reliable service with good speeds. I am delighted to hear of plans for expansion into more areas.