HELENSBURGH'S public wifi provision won't be returning any time soon after councillors agreed to formally terminate the contract for the free pilot scheme.

Work carried out on town centre Wi-Fi in towns across Argyll and Bute, including the Helensburgh pilot project, was reviewed at a meeting of the authority's policy and resources committee on Thursday.

The committee previously decided to run a pilot project with Wi-Fi installed within Colquhoun Square in late 2015.

Organisation Deepcblue Limited, which set up a delivery company called Broadchord – which has since been dissolved – was awarded the contract.

However, a number of issues relating to the concession model means the service stopped operating.

During the CHORD works it was established that control panels required to support the wifi were not installed within the correct lighting columns.

The service was able to function, but there were some wires located on the exterior of the lighting columns which left them vulnerable to vandalism.

Due to vandalism the service was disconnected in part of June and July 2016.

In July 2016, the Deepcblue/Broadchord server failed, and it was unable to be replaced due to capital costs.

Deepcblue/Broadchord claimed that on average about 40-50 people per day were using the wifi service and that peak usage was approximately 600 users in one week.

Councillor Gary Mulvaney, council depute leader and finance lead, said: “I think it was right to try this approach, but ultimately outwith really large towns and cities, free use public wifi is simply not commercially viable or sustainable.”

In Oban the BID 4 Oban (Business Improvement District) team has been working with the council to provide a privately run publicly available wifi service at no cost to the council.

BID 4 Oban obtained grant funding to support the capital cost of the new equipment and BID 4 Oban covered the revenue costs of operating the service.

The private service in Oban, which has been in place since April, has around 700 users page visits a month.

The project has been progressed without the need to use council infrastructure and the report to Thursday's committee meeting said the Oban solution is one which could be utilised in other locations.

Councillor Aileen Morton, leader of Argyll and Bute Council said: “It’s a shame the Wi-Fi service in Helensburgh ceased as I think young people in particular did appreciate the free access to data.

“We knew that it would be challenging to get the same kind of results you see in cities in a smaller town but it’s good to see that a different model has now been delivered in Oban through local businesses working together and this type of model may then be possible in Helensburgh in future.

“Considering how fast digital capacity and usage changes it may well be that a different approach altogether would work better if this was being looked at again locally.”

Further information on the usage and details about the activities that Deepcblue/Broadchord had undertaken in providing Wi-Fi services were requested for inclusion in the report but had not been received.