Many of us are not surprised by the recent news that Argyll and Bute has come 3rd last in a table ranking local authority areas by broadband speeds.

Even in areas that have been visited by some of the BT Openreach teams, I have received numerous complaints about houses and in some cases whole streets being bypassed.

To give an example on Shore Street, Bowmore on Islay at least one of my constituents has been waiting since July 2018 for super fast fibre broadband.

I have also heard very worrying unconfirmed reports from my constituents that sub contractors had not put the fibre cable onto their side of the street and the connections were missed out.

Until this is fixed they are still on the old system indefinitely and there is no timescale for when this will be rectified. If this is true then this is just one example of their being seemingly poor levels of quality control for some of the work being done by the subcontractors of BT Openreach.

Delivering high-speed broadband in rural areas is a must and we cannot have a two tier system of broadband provision that has rural households paying the same for their internet as urban areas while receiving a slow and subpar service from our internet providers.

Cllr Alastair Redman