The village of Mouswald is split in two – those who have access to superfast fibre broadband, and those who don’t.
Rural areas of Dumfries and Galloway have been enjoying fibre broadband rollout through the Scottish Government’s Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband scheme. However the Mouswald exchange was enabled last year, but only half the lines on the exchange actually received access to fibre, but the other half was left without, despite being assured for the last two or three years that they were scheduled to be upgraded.
Mark Smith, chair of Mouswald Community Council said, “It’s been very frustrating over the past two or three years of promises that the whole exchange would be upgraded, to now discover that despite all the plans and promises it still hasn’t happened and has dropped off the schedule. We can’t understand why the Openreach engineers just stopped the project half way through. Premises around Mouswald Place and Cleuchbrae include the lodge park, with residential units as well as high-end hot tub lodges. Visitors to the area are left thinking we’re way behind the times with shaky and slow wifi.
“Not only that, but many of the numbers which have lost out are for businesses which rely on digital connectivity. A substantial number of residents are now working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic. It’s simply not acceptable to be stranded with pathetic broadband, when neighbours down the road are fully connected. This really needs to change now; we’re only 10 minutes from Dumfries not some remote off-the-beaten-track community.”
Moira Forsyth lives in one of the affected properties and works for a government agency. She’s currently working from home until February and says, “The connectivity for our hamlet is, quite frankly, abysmal. If we are to expect people to work remotely, to run rural businesses and be on par with the rest of the developed world we need fast and reliable communications as a basic minimum. My connection is not only slow, it cuts out completely on a regular basis and I have been told it’s the condition of the lines. I can’t work efficiently in these conditions. If rural areas aren’t fully serviced, people will simply migrate into our towns to live and we could see a depopulation of our smaller communities, like this part of Mouswald. A modern-day version of the clearances if you like. ”
Oliver Mundell MSP has been rallying the cause for Mouswald Community Council. He’s repeatedly asked Openreach about their plans to complete the upgrade at Mouswald, but without success. Last Thursday (20.08.20) he asked an official parliamentary question to the Scottish Government to try and determine when Fibre Broadband will be completed in Mouswald.
