Connecting Scotland our broadband future: Making it Happen
Project ATLAS: making it more competitive
- Addressing market failure for large buyers of bandwidth in urban areas.
- Phase I - virtual telecoms trading exchange and backhaul.
- Phase II aims to spread benefits, and thus contributes to Executive's strategy to increase local access.
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1. Scottish Enterprise have analysed the Scottish telecoms market (see notes 2 and 3), and found there was a complex set of issues constraining the market in Scotland including limited wholesale competition, cost of entry and access for ISP and other service retailers, restricted last mile access, and technological limitations and obsolescence.
2. The first phase of Project ATLAS is to set up a virtual telecoms trading exchange (TTE) in Scotland supported by a link (backhaul) to London. The target market for the TTE will be large corporates and specialist high-end users of bandwidth (such as ISPs) in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. They will be able to benefit from increased transparency and quality of service in their purchase of bandwidth, as well as the likelihood of lower prices through a competitive marketplace.
3. Contracts have been awarded and the telecoms trading exchange is expected to be operational by the end of the year.
4. Phase II will spread the benefits of ATLAS more widely, through building remote hubs in some of Scottish Enterprise's business parks, with backhaul links to the main ATLAS hub in Edinburgh. This phase will also implement neutral fibre as local networks in each of the business parks, offering opportunities for all service providers to access customers on the parks. The network will be based on next generation technology with substantial future proofing.
5. By providing competitively-priced backhaul to the trunk network, it could even ultimately help to stimulate competitive local access provision by FWA or mobile operators. An invitation to negotiate has already been issued to preferred suppliers. We know that this represents a sensitive market intervention, and Scottish Enterprise will ensure that it is developed with full cognisance of regulatory requirements.