How Fast?

The Pathfinder North network is delivering some of the fastest broadband speeds across the Highlands and Islands, allowing local authorities to now deliver enhanced services to employee and citizens.

Most households in the Highlands and Islands are used to a home broadband service that ranges from 256kb, up to 8Mb per second which is usually shared with up to fifty households at anyone time.

Prior to Pathfinder North being implemented. local authorities had a network that had connections based on a range of dial-up, ISDN and lower-speed broadband services, which limited the opportunities to provide enhanced services, and realise cost benefits that a future-proofed broadband network would provide.

Our new network is delivering speeds from 2Mb to 300Mb per second, which is not shared with anyone else, allowing local authorities to make full use of the bandwidths available.

Employees of local authorities, will start seeing new and excitiing projects to deliver enhanced features, and services over this new network, such as desktop video conferencing and the opportunity for Councils to switch to more cost effective VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services.

For education, the barrier of bandwidth capacity previously has now been removed so they can start delivering the exciting services as part of the national GLOW intranet to students.

And for the public, more interaction with the Councils, through enhanced online web services, video conferencing of Council committee meetings, high-speed broadband access from libraries and community schools are an example of just some of the services that would have previously unable to be delivered over the old infrastructure.