I keep telling people that Scottish Enterprise and its subordinate organisations are a waste of space. Read on to find out why:

Scottish Enterprise has launched a campaign urging Scottish businesses to get broadband so they improve customer service, productivity and communication. This has been reported by stating that only one in five firms have broadband in Scotland, compared to one in four across the UK as a whole. So you might think that the campaign is targeted at those extra 5%. But, unfortunately, the statistics don’t bear this out. This is because it also depends on the availability of broadband:

According to figures provided by the BBC, broadband coverage in Scotland is 65%, i.e. it’s available to that percentage of the population. In the rest of the UK, it’s 80%. So, let’s do some calculations:

For Scotland
Nationally, a 20% take up (“one in five”) from a coverage of 65% indicates that 30.8% of all Scottish businesses would like to have broadband (i.e. 100 / 65 * 20).

For rest of the UK
Nationally, a 25% take up (“on in four”) from a coverage of 80% indicates that 31.3% of all rest of UK businesses would like to have broadband.

So, we have a marginal difference of 0.5%. Not the 5% as reported. Scottish Enterprise and Broadband For Scotland should be targetting a general increase in broadband, i.e. disregarding the current take up, and pushing for increased coverage. Unfortunately, neither of those require reports or surveys to be produced.

Let’s look at the Highlands and Islands Enterprise website to see what evidence there is of businesses in my area benefiting by using broadband. Now, that’s extensive isn’t it?