Stay Home, Highland Laddie – Government agencies in Scotland rush to install broadband throughout the sparsely populated hinterlands. Without it, they fear, talented young people and businesses will flee.

Getting to Kilchoan, the most westerly village in mainland Britain, requires both persistence and a strong stomach.

By Hector Mackenzie Wired.com

Accessible only by ferry or miles of tortuously twisting single-track roads, this lonely village of 150 on the rugged Ardnamurchan peninsula is one of the most isolated communities in the Highlands of Scotland, itself the most northerly part of mainland Britain and the most sparsely populated region of Europe.

Members of the Highland and Islands Enterprise network in Scotland are spearheading a massive, high-profile campaign to promote the benefits of broadband technology in one of the most remote and sparsely populated regions of Europe.Trailblazing plans for a University of the Highlands and Islands hinges on the application of technology such as video conferencing to link campuses across an area in excess of 10,000 square miles.The beautiful island of Skye is cloaked in romantic history and proves a major lure to visitors.

But even here, a burgeoning educational community attends a stunning state-of-the-art college, Sabhal Mor Ostaig, where classes in the Gaelic language are taught alongside traditional Highland music. This too is part of the University of the Highlands and Islands network.The University of the Highlands and Islands will be a full-blown, technology-heavy reality by 2007, the multimillion dollar project’s backers believe. Video conferencing is already a daily reality, bringing together dispersed members of the project team across the sparsely populated Highlands of Scotland.Hill walkers flock to the Torridon area of Wester Ross in the Scottish Highlands.

Even tiny populations in areas like this soon will have easy access to educational facilities across the region.Lochs like this, just outside Inverness, are a magnet for visitors who enjoy the clean, unspoiled environment of the Highlands of Scotland. Attempts to reverse the brain drain of talented youngsters, however, hinge partially on establishing a state-of-the-art technological infrastructure, such as that found in the expanding multicampus university project.Stained-glass specialist Patrick Ross-Smith uses techniques dating back hundreds of years in his business on tiny Fair Isle in Scotland. But cutting-edge computer-design technology, bought with the help of a grant from his local enterprise company, is helping him engage with the world.Patrick Ross-Smith is pictured with a sample of his work. The stained-glass artist finds the latest computer technology is a useful tool for his work.Inverness, the capital of the Highlands, will be an administrative hub for the University of the Highlands and Islands network, linking students at campuses across a huge, sparsely populated region. Only recently granted city status, Inverness — with a population of just over 50,000 — is by far the largest center of population in the Highlands.

Best known for its rich, romantic history, the Highlands of Scotland are now at the heart of a digital revolution.Mysterious Loch Ness, with its legendary monster, is one of the top tourist attractions in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. But the area is now attracting attention for its growing reputation as a technology hub ready to do business with the world.

Yet under an initiative to create a high-tech, multicampus University of the Highlands and Islands, or UHI, students once forced to leave here to pursue further education now can stay close to their homes. The chance of reversing a brain drain of young talent is seen by many here as vital to the area’s future viability.

The proponents of UHI — which should reach university status by 2007 — rely heavily on what development agency Highlands and Islands Enterprise Chairman Jim Hunter dubs a "telecoms revolution." Without it, linking a population of 208,600 spread across 10,000 square miles wouldn’t be possible.

The UHI project’s networks and applications development manager Jem Taylor oversees the task of linking 15 existing campuses with around 50 video-conferencing learning centers (such as the one at Kilchoan) across a sprawling region with a population density of just eight people per square kilometer.

Consider that students "attending" these virtual classes may be located as far north as the oil-rich Shetland Isles.

"Put it like this, I don’t spend a lot of time chatting with colleagues at the water cooler," Taylor said. "I’m more used to seeing them on a small screen. The use of fairly advanced technology is innate in the culture of the UHI. We are less concerned though with high quality than in getting something which works."

A telecom package called BT LearningStream is used to build a link into the UHI phone system. "Then we have a PBX (private branch exchange) shelf in the remote site, perhaps 150 miles away," Taylor said. "On that shelf we put in cards for telephones — digital internal handsets, fax, whatever — and for ISDN support for internal ISDN video conferencing and for data.

"We connect a router to this and provide internal network at 1.5 Mbps over a virtual Nx64 cct. In the learning centers we have PCs, video conferencing sets, access to core services like e-mail."

The UHI plan is part of a wider communications revolution helping overcome the age-old barriers of distance, geography and population sparsity.

Tasked with facilitating development and training opportunities, Highlands and Islands Enterprise is spearheading a campaign to put this historically disadvantaged region at the forefront of broadband in Britain. HIE wants the area to become the first in Britain to achieve more than 95 percent broadband coverage.

If that can be achieved, it will be the most significant telecommunications development in a generation, comparable to the introduction of mainstream electricity in the area, officials say.

Telecommunications provider BT Scotland is the first to acknowledge the Highlands’ "very challenging geography." Yet small, rural digital exchanges in Britain were first pioneered in Scotland (birthplace of the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell).

HIE’s broadband campaign is urging people across the Highlands to register an interest in the super-fast connection. That, in turn, helps trigger an investment by BT Scotland in the necessary upgrades. Munlochy, a village of 759 on the Black Isle, for example, has been allocated a trigger figure of just 150 people to commit before the necessary upgrades are made.

BT Scotland’s Director Bob Downes meanwhile welcomes the steady flow of small communities into the Internet fast lane. "We believe the upgrade of these exchanges will present the Highlands with the potential to become one of the most advanced broadband communities in Europe," he said.

The Highland Council’s spokesman on information and communications technology, Councilor David Alston, sees the success of the UHI and broadband campaigns as vital. "The central issue facing the Highlands is demographic change, including fewer younger people," he said.

"The only means to settle this is to attract people to settle and work in the area. With access to good links, many people can in effect bring their jobs with them and choose to take the benefits of our environment, education and quality of life."

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