Digital Scotland

Data

The main analysis in the report draws on three sources: Ofcom, ISD, and SIMD.

1. Ofcom’s UK fixed-broadband postcode-level data (2013). The Ofcom data is based on a snap shot of data provided by the largest fixed broadband providers in the UK for the period of June to July 2013. Data relating to each broadband connection operated by BT, Virgin Media, Everything Everywhere, O2, KCom, TalkTalk, or Sky were collected and aggregated.

   The Ofcom dataset is described in detail in Ofcom’s 2013 Infrastructure Report. For each connection, the data collected included the postcode, modem sync speed, data use and package details. For postcodes with less than three residential or small business premises, or where Ofcom hold data on at least three broadband connections, most of this data is not published, "To protect anonymity." However, the number of connections is published for each postcode with at least three premises.

   The number of connections is published for postcodes that cover 99.7%, and the full data is published for postcodes that cover 96.7%, of households in Scotland.

2. For some population data and links to higher geographies, we use the October 2013 release of the Postcode Reference File dataset produced by the Information Services Division of NHS Scotland. We use only the 146,749 active postcodes; those with no Date of Deletion. Each record includes 82 fields, most of which we have not uses.

   The data includes counts for households (total 2,538,280), delivery points (total 2,630,460), and non-residential delivery points (total 115,086) for each postcode, and links to several higher geographies, including datazones.

3. We use Part 2 (Overall ranks and domain ranks [2.3 MB .xls]) of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation data, which provides scores and ranks for each of the SIMD factors, together with population and working population counts, for each of the 6,505 datazones in Scotland.