Computer Weekly has reprinted an article that I penned when considering NextGen and Digital Challenge themes for 2016. It’s impossible to rank their significance but in top place I have the Collaborative Economy – collaborative skills being now recognised as a fundamental for all manner of ventures, community projects and public sector initiatives.
New metrics for capturing Quality of Experience will gain supremacy over the poverty of legacy QoS measures (see previous post 8/12). That trend will inform regulatory efforts – not least in considering digital futures. Much will depend on regulatory expectations of (and insistence on) corporate capacity to collaborate. In many ways Collaborative Advantage will outplay old notions of Competitive Advantage.
Open Data will also contribute to a richer 2016 – particularly in Health and in Municipal Enterprise. Here again collaborative skills will fuel progress – and once again leave non-participants wondering why their grand schemes fail to deliver. Under the spotlight of new evidence, Municipal Enterprise will, in 2016, become openly and honestly discussed. The ‘art of the possible’ will no longer be assessed by an elite but liberated by data journalists and the shift towards more Open Corporate Data as enterprises begin to catch up with the public sector.
And finally 2016 will be the year when the UK wakes up to the realisation that digital access infrastructure investment is much more than searching for quick fixes by trying to adapt legacy networks designed for analogue telephony. Digital access design is significantly different – and the entire UK economy demands fresh (collaborative) future-proofed approaches.
Groupe Intellex 
Do hope you are right! we hope 2016 teaches government how to see through the hype surrounding Digital Britain and see that old phone networks can not deliver future prosperity via digital services, as a third of the UK is still without a fit for purpose connection. And always will be. Copper is so yesterday.
I fully agree and (fortunately) I’m not the only optimist. Here are some wise words today from Tom Goodwin of Havas Media:
“In 2016 ALL legacy companies should seek to retool for the future. They shouldn’t upgrade systems, it’s like building a 3rd runway at Heathrow, they should build in parallel a new system for the future, to replace everything. To open in one new go.
It’s not new signals on a old train line, it’s a brand new high speed line built alongside, which is faster and always ends up cheaper and boosts capacity. It just needs one of CAPEX, not incremental.”
BUT – let’s also acknowledge that we have millions of ‘experts’ who can say what is wrong or how we’ve goten to into this state but we lack folks who are doing something about it – 2016 will have endless opportunities to shift out of the negative into the positive.
Best wishes for all your (collaborative) endeavours.
We need more alternative networks. We need competition to break free from the obsolete monopoly which is throttling innovation in the UK. The altnets are proving it is possible. With modern wifi networks and with fibre networks. Copper has had its day, like the canals – it needs to be replaced with the technology of the future, and only competition will make it happen.
So the question is, how can investors be encouraged to back new market entrants?
Regulatory certainty would help but how can that be achieved? How deep are your discussions with Ofcom? or HM Treasury? or the City?
New understanding of favourable shifts in economic models (risk elimination) would help but who is delivering that education? or educating the educators?
Wider public awareness of successes would help but who is seriously driving media influencers to run with that?
Greater public/private collaboration would help but how many recognise the value of Municipal Enterprise? How much support do you give to the Local government Association?
Clues abound – and are being acted upon. So back to my earlier point – 2016 is the year of waking up to new (collaborative) realities.
Clues do abound, social media is full of them, but the powers that be are still convinced that superfast broadband is coming to everyone, and it will take some pretty powerful stuff to convince them it is a travesty, and that the future cannot come through obsolete copper phone lines. Let us hope you are right and that collaboration will start to happen in 2016. We are already a laughing stock in the digital world.