T-Mobile set out their views for the potential role of mobile broadband in delivering a ‘Digital Scotland’, highlighting the challenges to delivering a 2Mbps Universal Service Commitment across the country.

The Scottish Government is clearly at an early stage in assessing the implications of the ‘Digital Britain’ report, and indeed is still finalising the final stages of the roll out of 512Kbps broadband across Scotland. However, ministers and officials are keen to work with industry to ensure that Scotland maximizes the potential of ICT to the economy.

There was consensus that Scotland can do more to embrace the potential of increased electronic connectivity, and that there are real opportunities from greater electronic connectivity.  The first example of this was the opportunities to attract data centres and cloud computing to Scotland, which are absolutely dependent on having the right network in place.

In education, we need to develop richer applications for learners and students, but have made a good start to embracing the potential of e-learning.  However, there was agreement that we need to do more to tackle the emerging ‘digital divide’ with less affluent urban areas falling behind more well off rural areas in terms of broadband take up and use.

The growth of ICT has posed difficult questions of print and broadcast media, which they are struggling to answer.  It is possible that this could lead to the decline of some of Scotland’s best-known titles.

Despite the audience’s interest in the topic, less than half the room uses communication tools like Facebook or Bebo on a regular basis.

So while there was general agreement about the need to invest in new networks, there was a sense that it is still not clear exactly how these will be used and what benefits that they could bring to Scotland.