UK Government Broadband Plans

The UK government plans that by 2017, about 95% of the country will have been covered by super-fast broadband and about 98% will have covered through 4G

The UK has a strong foundation for connectivity, but the Government recognizes the need to do more. So what is it doing about it?

As a Frontrunner, Britain is reaping the benefits of early investments in cloud and big data assets and a-well-thought-out strategy to drive the adoption of 4G, fiber optics, and the Internet of Things (IoT).

With an academic environment conducive to innovation and technical collaborations between the public and private sectors, as well as a steady flow of funding from the government, the stage is set for augmented innovation in Britain.

The terrain

The UK government is on a mission to transform its broadband network across the country to make speeds of 100 Mbps available to all of its citizens. In 2015, the UK Government announced it would invest £1.7 billion through 47 local projects to improve broadband – with the overall aim of ensuring that approximately 95 percent of the country has access to super-fast broadband by 2017 and 98 percent has 4G coverage.

Investments in high-speed broadband, data center (DC) networks, and cloud platforms are in turn creating a new form of competitive advantage.

Now, a growing community of developers is inventing new products and services, using these platforms as their foundation.

By fostering innovation, the UK is hoping to achieve an advantage in a global race to develop the standards that will underpin 5G, which experts expect will be crucial to the development of IoT and the growth of augmented innovation. Based on an audit by the National Infrastructure Committee the UK will set out its 5G strategy in 2017.

When it comes to fast broadband, the UK is leading the way, with adoption levels 50 percent higher than Germany and significantly higher than other major European economies. The uptake in fast broadband reflects a growing demand for media applications, especially for entertainment.

For instance, Virgin Media, part of Europe’s largest cable network, is planning to extend its reach from 12.6m homes to 17m – almost two-thirds of UK households – with an initiative called Project Lightning.

This plan is expected to create 6,000 jobs and is one of the largest private digital infrastructure investments in the UK in recent years.

Speed bumps

The UK has invested solidly in its digital infrastructure. It has the largest digital economy in the G20 as a percentage of GDP over the last five years. However, the international landscape is getting competitive.

The challenge for Britain is to maintain its lead in the face of tough and varied competition, and an increasingly tepid global economic forecast.

Horizons

The British government could be a good role model for other countries as they chart their way on the connectivity map. It has shown foresight by having a long-term strategy and has supported its digital initiatives with appropriate funding.

In 2014 the Government committed to investing £42 million into the Alan Turing Center –for research into the collection, organization and analysis of big data. A further investment of £40 million was announced in September 2015 for the IoTUK program, with £10 million set aside for a single collaborative R&D project in a city region.

The UK public sector has been the biggest adopter of cloud solutions and has set an example for other verticals to follow.

The government’s introduction of G-Cloud has allowed small companies to compete with the larger traditional players for government contracts to supply cloud IT services. Initiatives such as G-Cloud have encouraged bids from smaller IT service providers and are attracting investments to build DCs to serve the rest of Europe.

The government is also investing in the development of 5G mobile technologies with the launch of Europe’s largest academic research center. The UK 5G Innovation Center is the largest European center dedicated to the development of the next generation of mobile services. In an innovative collaboration between the public and private sectors, the center is funded by £12 million from the Higher Education Funding Council for England and more than £68 million from a number of private international telecom groups.

The government has nurtured an environment that supports start-ups and entrepreneurship. For instance, the UK government has recently exempted about 100 DCs from tax on energy usage in order to create a favorable environment for the DC business.

Given how power hungry DCs are, the move has energized the DC market supply side.

Milestones: IoT

In 2014, Innovate UK, the Government’s innovation agency backed a consortium of 40 UK tech companies to create a new open IoT specification that allows machines to work together over the internet, and for applications to analyze data independent of human intervention. As part of the Government’s digital economy strategy, Innovate UK pledged to invest £30 million a year for the first four years (2015-2019) to support innovation in the digital economy. Below are a few examples of companies that have benefitted from this investment:

Crowd Connected has launched its ‘co-locator’ system to aggregate festival-goers’ smartphone data to map behavior and allow organizers to respond accordingly. Their collaboration with Live Nation at Wireless Festival 2014 came after a £25,000 grant and competition win with Innovate UK.

Looking ahead

As a Frontrunner on the Connectivity Journey, the UK is slowly shifting towards augmented innovation, and is therefore in a position to share its experience and expertise in reaching this point on the connectivity path. It has proved by example that a healthy collaboration between government and industry can achieve measurable successes for the economy as well as the technological world.

Additional Sources:

• UK Seeks Head Start on ‘Internet of Things’,Financial Times, September 2015
• Virgin Media Challenges BT with Cable Network Extension Plan, The Guardian, February 2015
• BT is the Champion of Fast Broadband, The Telegraph, March 2016
• The Future and How to Survive It, Harvard Business Review, October 2015

– Global Connectivity Index