Gigabit Broadband – too much to choo choo? 2013 Study Tour preliminary details announced

10 Feb

The first of this year’s Community Study Tours is planned for June and will visit Chattanooga – the USA’s first Gigabit City.

The final details will be confirmed soon after we get back from our ‘pathfinder’ visit (today we are only half way through) but the preliminary plan can be seen in the Business and Community Development section of the main Group Intellex website.

Chattanooga will interest not only ‘smart city’ developers but also innovators from energy utilities, environmentalists and investors.  With inward manufacturing investment from VW,  service relocation by Amazon and strong leadership in public services, the city has  become an economic exemplar.

Further details and registration process will be confirmed in early March.

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broadband with coffee – and bacon butties

10 Feb

NG Events kicked off their 2013 programme with a debate for parliamentarians at a ‘broadband policy breakfast’ last week in Portcullis House, Westminster.

The event, chaired by Chi Onwurah MP, explored three topics in depth guided by speakers drawn from participants in the 2012 NextGen events programme.

To maximise discussion time the speakers were each given only 3 minutes to introduce their topic and a very healthy debate ensued.

A summary report of the proceedings is now available and further information can be requested via info@groupe-intellex.com

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Beyond the song and the sermon, the dream lives on

24 Jan

The media, perhaps inevitably, seemed more fascinated by Beyoncé’s performance than the content of President Obama’s 2nd inaugural speech – and on a very cold day it would be surprising if many in the crowd absorbed the full flavour of his messages.

From a distance the local context is not always obvious and some commentators have noted that foreign policy did not get a mention.  But what has struck home is the  sense that this President can rise above the fray and understands the need for vision beyond the party politics.

Our old friend Sid is no longer around to appreciate Obama’s leadership but he would have been delighted that the american dream is still very much alive.

Read the full story in ‘Beyond Beyoncé‘

 

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Multi-site/multinational companies press for action on EU digital networks regulation

24 Jan

A new study jointly commissioned by INTUG (the international user group for major telecoms customers) and ECTA (European Competitive Telecoms Association) estimates that the value of a single digital market in the EU for digital communications services as €90 billion.

The need for regulators to address the issues of easier cross-border service provision to enable efficiencies for major businesses has become a significant challenge as the digital economy develops.

Major businesses may represent only 2% of all EU companies but these multi-site, multinational organisations generate 60 million jobs and account for nearly half of EU business turnover and more than half of ‘value added’.

Together with public service agencies, businesses contribute disproportionally to the revenues of major telcos and, in their remit for protecting the interests of all customers, regulators should be mindful of the market distortions that flow from this ‘indirect taxation’.

You can find the full story and a link to the INTUG-ECTA study at Bdaily – the UK’s business news network.

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Digital divide narrows but digital needs broaden

23 Jan

In the UK the number of citizens on the wrong side of the digital divide may have been more than halved over the last 5 years but that still leaves a vast number who are about to find that, in the cause of cheaper, more-efficient and sometimes better public services, the government’s ‘digital by default’ policy will soon start to hit home.

Moreover, of those citizens who are not currently online-enabled (with neither the connectivity nor the skills) the majority are those for whom easier access to  public services, cheaper living, access to jobs, less hassle, better healthcare and education  are high priorities.

Tackling the challenges of the ‘doubly disconnected’ (economically and socially disconnected citizens) are 15,000 volunteers led by Helen Milner’s UK Online Centres Foundation.  Together they are delivering vast benefits – for the life chances of individuals and, economically, for all of us.

We thought it timely to update our story from 2007.   Read Helen’s account of the continuing need for greater digital inclusion in her report for Groupe Intellex ‘The scale of digital exclusion in the UK‘

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The Silver Lining Behind the High Street’s Cloud

17 Jan

Yesterday’s demise of the UK’s Blockbuster video store, coming so soon after the reins of HMV were handed to ‘the administrator’ and Jessop’s cameras followed Comet’s white goods and countless card shops into the wilderness, has kept headline and leader writers busy and caused ‘a nation of shopkeepers’  to pause for thought.

It was, said one columnist (overstating for effect), as if the High Street had finally run out of people who were not on the Internet.  We might even see the end of that most unlikely quack health treatment – retail therapy.  The outpouring of late love for lost brands stands in contrast to the reluctance of shoppers to visit the places before they died – and a good part of that must reflect the lack of money to splurge on optional extras when they can be found more conveniently and cheaper elsewhere.  Economists may describe this as ‘market pruning’ but hopes for a resurgence of growth in the Spring seem unlikely.

No amount of yearning for the real or imagined lost paradise of the High Street will slow the world sufficiently for those who want to get off but there is value to be found in this massive penny-dropping moment – the realisation that the digital economy is real.  Personal and collective moments of revelation such as this tell us how much we have been kidding ourselves as we cling to the ‘established order’.

In the UK the retail sector employs 4 million people and whilst feeling for those whose lives careers and incomes have been disrupted, our editorial ‘Pennies, Drops and Impacts‘ looks at the urgent need to get all our heads around the new realities and deliver a digitally inclusive and more-equitable society.

 

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Groupe Intellex Index: July-Dec 2012

7 Jan

This edition of the index shows that our published output may have been lower in the 2nd half of the year but we developed some digital economy themes in greater depth.

The Index provides quick links to all of our editorial material (including contributions from Marit Hendriks and Andrew Macdonald and Leader columns for the CMA) plus briefing notes for projects for NG Events and Community Study Tours.

Surprisingly popular in the last week of the year was a review of Irene Ng’s new book ‘Value & Worth’ with a hit–rate exceeding anything we’d published since last September.

More

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‘Value & Worth’: Irene Ng’s new book

23 Dec

For Irene Ng’s new book the title of our review, ‘Make of it what you will’, captures the sense of empowerment that is so evident in the digital economy.

This is an economy where the consumer plays a huge role in how products and services are used to create value.  It is an economy where suppliers must rethink their propositions.

In our increasingly digitally-enabled economy it is no longer sufficient for businesses to see sales of a product or service as their sole objective.  The value seen by the consumer will be co-created in combination with an array of services and digital devices and further conditioned by the context in which they are being used.

The author does not hide her academic credentials (including a Professorial Chair at Warwick University) but it is her pre-academic business experience that is evident throughout.  The challenges of creating and sustaining new markets will be fought in an intensely competitive arena – and one where the platforms for value co-creation are often beyond the influence of second-order supplicants.

Many business leaders will respond to these challenges with innovative creativity and startling success.  This week’s report from the GDS shows very clearly that the government is taking a lead.  Others may not be so responsive.  The world will move on and the disruption to the established order of things will be devastating for those who do not see or fully understand the changes that are already upon us.

This an explorer’s handbook as we venture into the digital unknown.

More at the Sunday Breakfast Book Review

See also our Business Advisory note at Bdaily – the UK business news network

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Sustainable Economic Development

14 Dec

Those who doubted the findings in 2009 of Wilkinson and Pickett’s ‘The Spirit Level’ may care to revisit the subject of equality in the light of the recent report from Boston Consulting Group.

In BCG’s ‘Sustainable Economic Development Assessment’ we have new methodologies and data for assessing the quality of GDP growth – the extent to which wealth is converted into well-being.

It turns out that countries with high rates of growth are not necessarily able to convert that into societal development whereas other less-GDP-impressive countries seem to have far better mechanisms for raising living standards.

Why should this matter when we seem to have little or no growth?  This study arrives at a time when people are drawing lessons from recessionary times and, in facing up to the creative disruptions of the digital economy, are more than ever beginning to appreciate the real role of infrastructure in enabling both wealth and wellbeing.

Full story here

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Less roaming risk – more roaming reward?

14 Dec

Progress towards elimination of excessive Mobile Roaming charges in Europe may be moving at a glacial pace but at least they are moving faster than the efforts to introduce national roaming within the UK.

As they square up to bidding at the UK’s auction for 4G spectrum all mobile operators are acutely aware of the costs of infrastructure investment.   At the same time ordinary users are equally aware that when their signal fades they guy in the next seat may well have a good signal from another operator.   The regulator has always claimed that national roaming (like its EU-wide counterpart) is technically too complex.  Maybe the cost of duplicate base stations will, at last, force the operators to collaborate – ‘tho it seems unlikely that they can get their heads around sensible nationwide wholesale mobile connectivity.

Meanwhile across the EU, INTUG, the representative body for business users, is working hard to define the market requirements for the July 2014 change that requires all operators to offer roaming as a separate service – thus calling time on the era of unexpectedly high bills.

Full story here

 

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