Seven Principles for a
Connected Scotland

Mobile coverage in Scotland is a commercial decision. Telecoms companies serve profitable areas. Remote glens, island communities, and rural settlements are served poorly or not at all — not because the technology can't reach them, but because quarterly returns don't justify the infrastructure.

We believe that is wrong. The ability to communicate with another person should not depend on how much commercial value a network operator assigns to your postcode. The Meshtastic Scotland network exists precisely in the gaps — the places where the market has decided you aren't worth connecting.

Every node we place is a small act of defiance against that logic. It says: this community deserves connectivity. Every person walking these hills deserves a way to reach someone if something goes wrong.

Scotland is already full of elevated structures — church towers, telecoms masts, water towers, estate buildings on high ground. These structures exist. They have owners. And a node mounted on a church steeple at 25 metres above the rooftops will outperform a node on the valley floor by an order of magnitude.

"At height" means thoughtfully identifying the structures in each community that sit above the local skyline — and asking permission to use them. A node you can drive to, check, maintain, and power reliably is the foundation of a network that actually works.

We deploy deliberately, not romantically. The question is always: does this structure have genuine line-of-sight that extends the network? If yes, it belongs in the registry.

The network grows through relationships, not through taking. Every church session clerk, estate factor, council facilities manager, and community trust that gives us access to their structure is a co-builder of this infrastructure. We owe them more than a signature on a letter.

We engage honestly. We explain what the hardware does and does not do. We make clear that the node is solar-powered, small, and reversible — we can take it down as easily as we put it up. We frame every conversation around what this does for their community, because that is the truth: this is community infrastructure.

We never take access for granted, never ghost a landowner who asks questions, and always leave a structure in better condition than we found it. Access once given can be withdrawn. We treat every relationship as a long-term partnership, not a transaction.

The Meshtastic network costs nothing to join. There are no subscriptions, no accounts, no central authority. A £20 LoRa device and the Meshtastic app is all anyone needs. Every node we deploy is a free relay for anyone with a device in their pocket.

This is not accidental. It is a design principle. We will never charge for access, never gate the registry, and never let commercial interests shape which structures we approach or which communities we serve. The network is a commons. We are stewards of it, not owners.

A community that understands this technology deploys it better. We share everything openly — installation methods, coverage maps, landowner conversation templates, hardware comparisons, lessons from failed deployments. There is no trade secret here and no competitive advantage to protect.

When someone asks how to talk to a church about mounting hardware on their steeple, we tell them exactly what worked for us. When someone wants to understand why 25 metres of height doubles their coverage radius, we explain the physics. The network gets stronger when more people understand it.

Mesh networks are resilient precisely because they have no centre. There is no server to go down, no company to fold, no tower to knock out. When one node goes offline, the mesh reroutes. Messages find another path. This is not a feature of Meshtastic — it is the architecture.

We extend this philosophy to our community. We do not depend on any single person, any single structure, or any single hardware supplier. We document deployments openly so others can maintain them. We design the network so that any node's failure degrades it gracefully, not catastrophically. Scotland's weather will test every installation. We build for that.

Scotland's built heritage and natural landscape are not deployment opportunities — they are the context in which we work. A church tower is not just a mast; it is a building that means something to a community. We approach every structure with care, and we leave no mark on it beyond the node itself, which must always be removable without trace.

We support Scotland's right to roam for recreational access, but permanent installations always require permission and always get it. We do not take shortcuts, do not hide hardware, and do not deploy anywhere that the community around that structure would not approve of if they knew what we were doing. Transparency is not optional.

If a deployment damages a relationship with a landowner, the node comes down. The network is not worth more than the trust that makes it possible.