Author - Hamish MacLeod, Chief Executive, Mobile UK

After many years in the mobile industry, I have developed a habit of sending colleagues photographs of mobile phone masts when on holiday around the world. It's a bit odd, I know, but last week, I was very happy and thrilled to send one of a new Shared Rural Network mast I came across being built by Calum’s Road on the Isle of Raasay.

For those unfamiliar with the story of Calum MacLeod (no relation, as far as I know), it is as heartbreaking as it is heartwarming, but it also represents a warning to other remote communities across the UK.  

Calum was born in 1911 and, when a young man, he and 99 others who lived in his neighbourhood petitioned Inverness County Council for a motor road to connect North Raasay with South Raasay. Their request was denied, and what followed over the next twenty years or so was the  gradual diminishing of this rural community, hampered by a severe lack of connectivity with their southern neighbours and the wider country. As people left to find opportunities elsewhere, the school and post office closed, and by the late 1960s, just two people remained in the whole of northern Raasay - Calum and his wife, Lexie.

Calum MacLeod was not one to take this lying down and, building on his Scottish resilience of living on such a remote island, on a spring morning in the 1960s, he placed into his wheelbarrow a pick, an axe, a shovel and a lunchbox. He trundled this cargo south from his croft house door, down the narrow, rutted bridle path, up and down rough hillsides, and along the edge of hazardous cliff faces. After almost two miles, he reached the adopted tarmac council road. There, he stopped and turned to face homeward. Then, single-handedly, Calum began to build a road, a task which would take him 20 years to complete. Calum MacLeod’s road to northern Raasay was surveyed, adopted and tarmacadamed by the council at Inverness in 1982.

It is a very touching story but also a stark illustration of what happens to communities through a lack of modern infrastructure.  

As today’s economies look to use wireless technologies ever more to support smartphones, connected cars, integrated transport networks, healthcare services, and many other applications, this applies to the urban environment just as much as the rural environment.  

At Mobile UK, we are very pleased that northern Raasay will be served by the SRN, but we are also continually surprised at the very variable attitudes to mobile connectivity, particularly among local authorities around the UK. Some do all they can to attract this fundamental infrastructure, while others are much more hesitant and even indifferent. This is why we are passionate about our Living Better Connected campaign – to spread the message of the benefits of mobile connectivity in combating exclusion, promoting innovation and investment in all locations, and fundamentally connecting communities.  

While Calum's determination and efforts were commendable, today’s communities cannot afford to wait two decades to be connected to modern society. They need modern digital networks now. Councils across the country must recognise the importance of mobile networks, prioritise them in their policy frameworks, and engage in honest and open discussions with residents about the significance of having the infrastructure that provides the mobile signal. We must not allow the Inverness County Council’s lack of foresight to be repeated in the digital era.

#BetterConnectedRural