BROADBAND: TAKING US INTO THE 21ST CENTURY.

Byline: By Dr Frank O'Donnell Director E-business, Scottish Enterprise 

TODAY innovation and new technology dominates our everyday lives more than ever before.

But the irony for us as Scots is that despite a proud history of invention, our future prosperity was recently put in real danger by our reluctance to embrace a new technology that everyone's talking about - broadband.

Broadband is recognised by all advanced and developing economies as being a key technology for economic growth, employment and future prosperity.

Governments around the world are investing billions in developing the infrastructure for broadband.

But uptake in Scotland was slow, which could have had potentially serious consequences for our future prosperity.

Thankfully, through our Broadband for Scotland campaign we have helped reverse this trend and Scotland is now outpacing the rest of the UK in getting connected.

This is just as well. For while we can all relate to faster internet speeds making it easier to download movies, broadband is much more than a toy, it delivers real economic benefits.

At a basic level, increased speed allows people to do tasks - including basic communications through email - faster, meaning greater productivity.

The UK's Broadband Steering Group reports that by 2015, successful adoption of broadband in the UK will boost productivity by 0.5 per cent to 2.5 per cent and increase GDP by pounds 22billion.

Broadband will also impact on the number of people in work.

In the US it is estimated that broadband technologies will directly create an additional 2.7million jobs by 2012.

And on a subject crucial to the sustainability of the whole country, broadband offers workers greater flexibility about where they choose to work, making it the ideal catalyst for the regeneration of our rural areas.

For consumers, on top of the recreational benefits, broadband can help put more money in people's pockets by lowering bills, giving access to cheaper travel and other services including the vast array of financial services now available online.

It can also support other key services such as learning and health.

It's also worth considering the consequences of a failure to embrace this new technology: #Productivity would trail behind that of other broadband-enabled economies # A lack of bandwith would discourage new companies from moving to Scotland #- There would be threat of a talented workforce leaving to join more advanced economies.

On a personal level, quality of life here would be worse than elsewhere and there would be a growing divide between urban and rural economies as access to broadband was biased towards our cities.

In short it's a situation we just couldn't afford to be in.

Happily though, it's one that, through the efforts of Broadband for Scotland, we will manage to avoid.