Satellite Broadband

Until recently, those households within a few kilometres of Kilchoan's BT exchange at the Sanna road junction have had a pretty good broadband service, with download speeds of up to 6.5 Mbps and upload around 0.33. However, in the last few months there have been problems, with huge fluctuations in speeds - so, for example, we can no longer use Skype to communicate with our son in Canada and uploading photographs to Blogger has required patience. The reason - so local gossip has it - is that, in installing some of the new fibre-optic cables, BT workmen damaged the existing telephone cables.

While Kilchoan is promised lightning speeds in September when superfast broadband is finally connected - the cables were installed in January 2015 - those who live on Ardnamurchan scenically beautiful north coast or in the Glenborrodale exchange area live, and will continue to live, in a BT broadband blackout.  Community Broadband Scotland did offer some north coast houses a glimmer of hope through a community-driven link to Arisaig, but this has been held up, apparently by BT.

So Tony Swift has been doing some research, and has come up with a company called EuropaSat. As the name suggests, it's satellite based, which has some inherent disadvantages, but the rates are reasonable, the speeds impressive, and their service, so far, first class. There's more about EuropaSat and its rates here.