Broadband & The Community

Broadband can help our communities develop and grow. It creates opportunity, flexibility and inclusion.

Rural Communities

Broadband and the internet enables communication, collaboration and sharing in communities and the ability to reach out to likeminded groups areas and interests. Shared community spaces are a huge part of youth culture and should be viewed upon as opportunity for engagement in community life for the future.

Opportunities such as podcasts of local story-telling, use of local maps giving information of the area.

Crofting

The increasing requirement for delivery of information through internet based forms makes broadband a real essential plus the ability to information gather offers opportunity and accessibility for farming in the community.

Commuting

As work-life balance becomes increasingly important in our society, broadband can help create an office environment from home where people can save on commuting time and spend more time with the family by rearranging their working day.

Mature Households

Broadband can open new worlds to mature households by interaction with others through forums, user groups and the ability to shop online. The web contains many, many areas of interest for a huge diversity of people.

Education

Broadband has the potential to vastly improve the educational experience of everyone in the Outer Hebrides. Broadband gives children in remote areas access to a much richer collection of resources than was previously available to them. The Internet is a huge library that never closes. Children can tap into a vast array of information to help them with their homework and assignments.
This information is not limited to the written word. It includes photographs, diagrams, videos and animations, all of which can help a child understand a subject so much more clearly.
But trying to access this information on a dial-up connection can quickly become frustrating, especially for children. Broadband’s high speed overcomes this problem and makes browsing even the most image-rich websites a pleasure.

Using the Internet, children can research their latest assignment, obtain help with their homework or ask for assistance from their teacher. Whatever topic they are researching, you can be sure that there will be information about it available on the Internet.

There are also search engines that are specially tailored to children. These engines only find information that is pitched at a child’s level of understanding. There are also websites dedicated to helping children with their homework. But it is only with Broadband that children can take full advantage of these wonderful resources.

Broadband is a valuable tool for teachers, too. Teachers can post assignments, information and results online for easy access by students. Having broadband access makes this job so much faster, allowing teachers to get on with more important tasks, such as lesson preparation.

Preparing lessons is a big part of a teacher’s job. Teachers need access to high quality resources to prepare interesting and stimulating lessons. A huge amount of material is available to teachers on the Internet, but searching for the right material can be very time consuming. Broadband’s high speed makes surfing the web a dream and helps teachers find suitable lesson material much more quickly. Using Broadband in education can benefit families and the community as a whole, not just individual students or teachers.

Creative Arts

Many parts of The Western Isles are beautiful and inspiring places. Artists, craftspeople, musicians and others often settle in these areas for that very reason. You can take advantage of the relaxing lifestyle and inspiring beauty of the Outer Hebrides, while still participating in the larger markets that metropolitan areas have to offer, by making use of the Internet and broadband.

Web-based Galleries - A website can be a wonderful place for people with a creative flair to exhibit their work. Not only does it showcase their talent, but it also allows their work to be seen and appreciated by a much wider audience.

As an artist or craftsperson you can display photographs of your work or videos demonstrating your technique. As a musician you can offer downloads of your music or clips of your latest music videos. And everyone can benefit from the potential increase in sales generated by showing their work to a larger audience.

Maintaining a website full of images, videos or music files would be very tedious without broadband, as these files are usually large and take a substantial amount of time to upload on a dial-up connection. Broadband makes this job quick and easy and leaves more time for you to concentrate on the creative aspect of your work.

Community Networking

People involved in the creative arts can also use the Internet to:
Purchase supplies that may not be available locally;
Find out about events being held at which they could display or demonstrate their work;
Network through email and chat rooms with other like-minded people and find out the latest industry gossip, where the best quality or cheapest materials are available or which shows are worthwhile attending. The speed of broadband makes all of these tasks a pleasure and its ‘always-on’ nature provides access to these services without delay.

E-Tendering

When procuring goods and services many public agencies will use an online portal. Businesses are invited to e-tender for the work.