The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Martin Gilbert
Connectivity is not only crucial to all forms of communication around the world, it is also the very essence of business and enterprise.
Marketing, trading, selling and purchasing goods and services all depend on efficient interconnection between countries, businesses and consumers. Every supply chain is a crucial and potentially vulnerable lifeline on which entrepreneurship depends.
As early as the Bronze Age it was adventurous traders who first connected with other races and civilisations, and that enterprising instinct, now assisted by hi-tech innovations developing at an exponential rate, remains strong.
Here in the north-east we are already on the way to becoming a global connectivity hub.
Connectivity begins at home and many of its nuts and bolts are not cyberbased but simply updated versions of traditional transport systems. Goods are still delivered by road on heavy goods vehicles, by rail on freight trains or by sea on container ships.
The north-east has committed significant investment to modernising all those facilities.
More than £4.5 billion is being invested in transport improvements across Aberdeenshire.
The recently opened Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route is one of the largest road-building projects in Europe, complemented by other infrastructure updates including new river crossings and major rail improvements.
Aberdeen International Airport, with regular connections to more than 40 international and domestic airports, servicing some three million passengers annually, has recently undergone an expansion, phased over four years, that has increased the size of the terminal by 50%, with improved passenger lounges, catering, retail outlets, immigration and arrivals facilities.
A flagship infrastructure improvement is the £350m expansion programme for Aberdeen Harbour. Established as long ago as 1136, Aberdeen Harbour Board is Britain’s oldest registered company, still open for business and expanding into a state-ofthe-art port facility capable of berthing cruise liners at the quayside.
This is one of the biggest marine infrastructure projects undertaken in the UK for decades and, although the work has suffered setbacks due to the Covid-19 crisis, confidence has been boosted by the recent announcement by the Scottish Government of £62m in funding for a number of projects, including the proposed Energy Transition Zone (ETZ), in which Aberdeen Harbour Board is a partner.
The other partners – Aberdeen City-Council-and-Scottish-Enterprise – are jointly committed to realise the concept initiated by Opportunity North East (ONE) to create a worldleading transition zone to attract and develop green energy R&D, innovation, manufacturing and services, along with the business and skills necessary to support energy transition activities.
Sir Ian Wood, who chairs ONE, has welcomed the early stage funding as a boost to the Energy Transition Zone, “to help strengthen the north-east of Scotland’s growing position as a global integrated energy transition cluster, creating a lot of employment over the next 20 years”.
Then there’s our key tourism industry, which Aberdeen Council’s tourism strategy for Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, 2018-2023, envisages growing to a visitor spend of £1bn by 2023. The strategy identifies not only the need to focus on transport connectivity to Aberdeenshire from its key inbound markets and around destinations, but also to build digital connectivity.
Arguably, developing digital connectivity across the north east and all its enterprises is the most crucial task. We received a wakeup call last year when a study by consumer group Which? revealed Aberdeenshire had one of the slower broadband speeds (10.1Mbps) in the UK.
But that’s already changing. Aberdeen is set to become Scotland’s first Gigabit city through a £40m investment by CityFibre, working with Vodaphone to deliver full-fibre broadband across the community.
Aberdeen has applied to the UK Government’s 5G Urban Connected
Communities project to trial emerging 5G mobile technologies.
In April, O2 and Vodaphone lodged an application to install a 5G base station at Kings Gate. There’s no doubt 5G will be a game-changer. The Scottish Government estimates that enhancing 5G capability Scotland has the potential to add £17bn to GDP by 2035, create 160,000 jobs and increase productivity by £1,600 per worker.
The government also believes 5G could help initiate 3,100 new businesses and a £3.3bn growth in export volumes. That’s the power of connectivity. That’s the future for enterprise. That’s the clear message: Only connect.
In the north-east we are on the way to becoming a global connectivity hub
Martin Gilbert Chairman of Aberdeen Standard Investments