The Scottish Government has taken over the roll out of Superfast Broadband for rural areas including Kingswells, but to date there has been no information regarding timescales, other than confirmation the programme will be completed by 2017.

Local councillor Steve Delaney raised concerns at the Council meeting on 31st October 2013, particularly relating to the current poor service in Kingswells. He said. “It remains impossible to get any meaningful information from the Scottish Government at this point in time. However, I do have assurances that an announcement will be made in January 2014 which will hopefully be more specific than what we’ve had to date”.

“This whole question of decent broadband speeds for Kingswells has been a case of two steps forward and one step back over the last couple of years. Funding was initially secured from the UK Government with a completion date of 2015. This was then withdrawn as a result of issues over State Aid regulations. It was later confirmed that rural areas such as Kingswells were exempt from these regulations. The handling of the rural element of the fund was then passed from the UK Government to the Scottish Government and the end date moved to 2017 rather than 2015”.

“We don’t currently know whether or not the delivery of Superfast Broadband to Kingswells has been delayed. Hopefully this is not the case, but please rest assured I will continue to argue the case for delivery to be undertaken sooner rather than later”.