The Tegola / HUBS Project

HUBS or High-Speed Universal Broadband for Scotland is a joint enterprise between the Universith of the Highlands and Islands, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Stirling to assist with the provision of high speed Internet access to communities in rural areas in Scotland that would otherwise be unserviced. HUBS accomplishes this by providing infrastructure support and technical expertise to local community networks which are ultimately owned, constructed and maintained by the communities themselves.

Tegola was the first such network, working with the Loch Hourn Community Broadband Cooperative (CIC), built as a wireless network covering the villages of Arnisdale and Corran, North Knoydart and Isleornsay on [Skye] and connected to the janet backbone at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the UHI college near Armadale.

Tegola / HUBS has since worked with the Knoydart Foundation and Hebnet to establish similar networks in South Knoydart and the Small Isles, respectively. Furthermore these three networks, being physically adjacent are now interconnected and engineered so as to provide mutual fail-over and redundancy in case of faults or outages. The experience gained from doing this has enabled members of the Small Isles communities to assist those in Glenfinnan and Applecross and Tegola / HUBS is also working with communities in Lanarkshire, Stirlingshire and West Lothian to build their own networks on a similar model.

In addition to assistance with the construction of these networks, it is clear that the communities involved are individually too small to have significant negotiating power to deal on a wholesale or carrier level with major UK telecommunications operators. This is evident, for example, in the West Highland and Small Isles network in that though they have significant internal infrastructure and multiple Internet connections, the networks are not yet multi-homed in the usual sense. Tegola / HUBS is able to fill this gap by acting for these communities collectively in their interactions with the Internet registries and major carriers in order that they are able to build truly world-class network infrastructure.

Finally, Tegola / HUBS operates an information resource which curates the knowledge and know-how obtained from these endeavours and makes it available so that others may learn from and build upon our experiences.

For the original Tegola homepage, go here.