Scotland announces £15m investment to elevate connectivity

Funding equipment geared toward bettering web accept exact of entry to for 23,000 low-earnings households

Angelica Mari

Angelica Mari

Published: 19 Aug 2020 15: 56

The Scottish authorities has announced new funding to lend a hand low-earnings families accept better web accept exact of entry to.

The £15m equipment has been announced as half of the Connecting Scotland programme, which has already invested £5m to connect as much as 9,000 families at high possibility from Covid-19.

On this most modern stage of the programme, disadvantaged families with kids and youngsters leaving care will be prioritised. Households will receive a computing machine, as effectively as unlimited files and technical lend a hand spherical aspects comparable to online security, for one twelve months.

“It has never been extra well-known to be linked and online,” said communities secretary Aileen Campbell “It permits us to accept exact of entry to data about possess safe and wholesome all over Covid-19, possess up a correspondence with chums and family, and leer or work.

“I am as a end result of this reality very chuffed so as to lengthen our Connecting Scotland programme and kind out the digital divide.”

The families will additionally accept accept exact of entry to to six months’ coaching and lend a hand with digital aspects. These households will be acknowledged by local authorities and other organisations, that can put together on behalf of the families.

The Scottish authorities says the extension of the programme and the provision of instruments most well-known to accept online is expected to lend a hand families and younger care leavers who might well well perchance now not otherwise manage to pay for to switch online, ensuring they’re now not extra disadvantaged.

The extension of Connecting Scotland follows the Scottish authorities’s setbacks across the roll-out of superfast broadband to all properties and agencies promised for 2021.

The R100 programme was announced in December 2017 and was half of a 2016 Scottish parliament election manifesto commitment by the ruling SNP.

But in January 2020, the authorities admitted that very top half of of Scotland’s population would have accept exact of entry to to connections of now not lower than 30Mbps by 2021 and that the ideally suited way was at possibility of be met by the tip of 2023.

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