Connecting Scotland: our broadband future
ANNEX B: NOTES
1 Scottish Executive, 30 January 2001 "Smart Successful Scotland"http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library3/enterprise/sss-00.asp
2 Office of the E-Envoy, 13 February 2001 "UK online: the broadband future"http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/publications/reports/broadband/index.htm
3 Office of Communications
4 Office of Telecommunications
5 Ovum for Scottish Enterprise, June 2000 "Connecting Scotland"http://www.ecommerce-scotland.org and enter download area.
6 Current ownership of the backbone is confined mainly to BT, Thus, NTL and Telewest, with BT owning the largest share. This is made up of a mainly fibre backbone with copper covering the local loops. BT run fibre between Glasgow and Edinburgh, up the east coast through Perth, Dundee and Aberdeen. They also have 2 fibre routes to Inverness from Glasgow and from Aberdeen and fibre to Dumfries & Galloway and the Borders. Thus owns an extensive backbone network of over 3,000 kms in Scotland based on Scottish Power's power grid, as well as leasing fibre from BT. The cable companies also own fibre within their franchise areas.
7 Report prepared for the Highlands and Islands Partnership Programme, December 2000 "Broadband Network Infrastructure in the Highlands and Islands"http://www.hipp.org.uk/downloadTMP/fnlrep.doc
8 Within these exchange areas, availability of ADSL will be subject to survey.
9 Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line is a distance-dependent technology. With rate adaption, reach is extended from 3.5km network reach from the local exchange to 5.5km. Subscribers living between 3.5km and 5.5km from the exchange will still receive the same level of service downstream (up to 500kbs) but the upstream bandwidth will vary according to the distance from the local exchange (typically from 64kbs to 250kbs).
10 BT have 1,100 exchanges in Scotland. These are of 2 types: older UXD5, and newer System X exchanges. There are 420 UXD5 exchanges covering some 4.5% of the Scottish population, mainly in rural and remote areas. The remaining 95.5% are served by System X exchanges. Both can provide ISDN but System X exchanges are more easily upgraded to provide ADSL.
11 Each licence holder must provide a service covering an area inhabited by 80% of the UK population by 2007.
12 GPRS provides high speed Internet access at a lower rate than 3G. Since 2 1/ 2G operates at the same cell size as 2G, there is potential for extensive coverage.
13 Some of the infrastructure needed to deliver broadband services might require planning permission. The Executive's planning policy for Radio Telecommunications, which is set out in National Planning Policy Guideline 19 (NPPG 19), is to enable the industry to expand and diversify, but this must be done in a manner which keeps the environmental impact to a minimum. The aim is that the equipment becomes an accepted and unobtrusive feature of urban and rural areas. The general principles set out in the NPPG regarding sensitive siting and minimising environmental impact should apply generally to telecommunications infrastructure.