Vital Highland Broadband Service Closes

There are many examples across Scotland where landowners large and small are continuing to frustrate the ambitions of individuals, businesses and social enterprises through the exercise of the fundamental monopoly control of land.

In short, if you own land and someone else wants to use it, you have the power of veto. The only general exceptions are statutory undertakings (gas, electricity, water) and local authorities and other public bodies who have powers of compulsory purchase.

The problems can range from a ransom being demanded for a servitude across land to provide access to to a development site to frustrating access to land through unreasonable demands in leases.

Last week I blogged about the problems facing the Isle of Skye Ferry CIC due to a lease of the ferry rights and landing slip that endures for 30 years with no break clauses, demands the tenant maintain the slips, and incorporates an upwards only rent review regardless of the financial performance of the tenant.

This lease was by definition not entered into by parties with equal power since one had monopoly private control of a public transportation right required by the community company to operate the ferry.

This blog notes another example of a community enterprise which is now being wound up due to similar problems.

CMNet is a social enterprise operating across Stomeferry and Achmore in Wester Ross. it was established in 2013 to provide broadband services to residents across a number of communities where there was a monopoly supply by BT that performed poorly. To their credit the members and Directors have built a successful business that remains the only provider of Next Generation broadband speeds to all households and businesses at a reasonable cost.

As with all such services, fixed equipment needs to be repaired, upgraded and replaced as the service grows and technology develops. Since the beginning, CMNet had secured vital across to a prominent local hill upon which was installed equipment and cabling including 700 metres of power cable.

A new landowner took over the land in the summer of 2025. [1] This led to the new owner approaching CMnet to renegotiate the lease in November 2025. Attempts were made to organise meetings and satisfy demands for information over the following months but by June 2026, no progress had been made.

The new owner was told in February 2026 that CMNet’s operations on the land were being suspended due to the uncertainty over the future. CMNet asked him for details of any revised proposals for the lease and for any revised rent demands. This was promised by June 2025 but never materialised.

By July 2026, it was by now over 11 months since the new landlord first raised the issue of a revision of the lease but CMNet had received no indication of that he wanted other than that he was unhappy to continue with the existing arrangement.

With outstanding maintenance required over a link that carried over half of CMNet’s subscriber traffic, the risks of failure were high. Directors were not prepared to “put in the considerable effort required to address the preventative maintenance items with no agreement for the use of the land”. Existing 60 GHz radios also would need to be upgraded. The longer preventative maintenance is suspended, the higher the risk is of failure that would result in urgent unplanned and un-budgeted maintenance.

Subscribers needed to be given three months notice to find an alternative ISP and so a decision had to be made well before winter.

At their July meeting, the Directors took a unanimous decision to close CMNet and end 12 years of successful community radio broadband services.

The frustration is set out in the letter below that appeared in the West Highland free Press on 14 August 2026.

There are no means in law for individuals or businesses being held to ransom over the delivery of essential services to appeal or seek judicial determination of essential lease agreements. Instead, they are left to appeal to popular opinion, lobby politicians, sign petitions and all sorts of other demanding and ultimately futile work to resolve questions that land reform legislation should have sorted out decades ago.

NOTES

[1] According to the Land Register the transfer of ownership has not in fact taken place but I presume that it is still being organised.