Average Understandings

10 Dec

Following a recent flurry of expensive reports claiming insights into aspects of digital infrastructure provision and use, it is time to remind readers of the ‘last law of averages’.

The oft-quoted ‘Law of Averages’ is, of course, a statistical nonsense usually deployed in the cause of ‘advanced wishful thinking’.  Our version highlights a darker side.  Over-reliance on averaged data means that your understanding of the data will be less than adequate – you might say, ‘below average’!

‘The devil is in the detail’  is a common complaint.   With great successes (and failures) hidden under the average blanket, the risks for policy developers are huge – and often  followed by ‘unintended consequences’.

Fortunately the digital economy is gradually eliminating the need for the bland summary reports lacking essential insights.  It is becoming altogether easier to provide the data packaged with the tools for its exploration and in-depth analysis.

Full story here

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Economic Revitalisation

10 Dec

It’s becoming better understood that Cities and Communities who have identified better connectivity as an enabler of economic growth must also pursue a series of programmes designed to exploit the enhanced infrastructure and secure commitments to its future improvement.

In this briefing on Economic Revitalisation, written ahead of NextGen’s 2013 UK events programme, we identify five essential programme strands that together will ensure that the investment in connectivity is worthwhile. At the same time these strands will also inform the local criteria for network design and operation.

The five key strands have emerged from global studies of ‘intelligent communities’ and the UK government’s Open Data and Digital by Default initiatives. They are collectively described as ‘applied’ digital infrastructure.

More

 

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Connecting Continents

30 Nov

While I’ve been deeply immersed in an altogether different journey my colleague Marit Hendriks has trekked to Cape Town and back.

Communications networks are seen by many as the threads that tie us all together but as Marit’s exploration of the African market shows it is the diversity of developments and their contexts that provide the most interesting insights.

Although her visit was focused on the Africa Com conference & exhibition, Marit arrived in South Africa in time to see beyond the glitz of the international conference centre.  In the first of her reports (Under African Skies) Marit takes a trip into a township and takes measure of the vast inequalities and digital divisions.

At the conference itself the contrasts between Europe and Africa were also very much evident – the local approach to Social Media, the huge importance of Mobile Payment systems and the very different priorities for infrastructure in the wider wilderness.  The venturing zeal, the local software industry, the scale of the opportunities are all vast – but the scale of inequalities and the size of the un-served market demands a very different approach to market development.

If there was one common theme between our two continents it might be found in the gradual reduction of relevance of the old ‘last generation’ Telco models – while millions clamour for connectivity the investment spotlight has shifted to the cleverness of Apps and the demand for higher ICT skills – and deepened the digital divides in places that are already desperately disconnected.

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4G race starts as 5G warms up

28 Oct

The imminent launch by mobile operator Everything Everywhere of the UK’s 4G services (with others to follow in 2013 when spectrum is auctioned) comes just 2 weeks after announcement of government research funding for  5G.

The £11.6m from the UK’s Research Partnership investment fund will be more than matched by a further £24m from a consortium of mobile infrastructure providers and operators.  The funds enable a 5G innovation centre to get underway at Surrey University.

Since the heady days of 2G (GSM) Europe has lost pole position in mobile technologies although we should not forget that Cambridge-based ARM has a dominant presence in billions of mobile devices.

The shape of mobile things to come is highly speculative and, with pressure for ever-greater spectrum efficiency and higher-capacity links to support bigger and faster applications, there is a huge interdependency on the adequacy of the fixed digital network to handle the traffic from thousands of smaller localised mobile base stations.

The expected explosion of demand for M2M devices and ‘The Internet of Things’ may already be stretching the limits of 4G and no-one imagines that the global standards-making process for 5G is going to be an easy collaborative ride.

Full story here

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The Sunday Breakfast Review: Seizing Our Destiny

21 Oct

As a follow-up to the NextGen 12 session ‘The rise of the Intelligent City’, our Sunday Breakfast review this week looks at the latest ICF publication – Seizing Our Destiny’.

This  slim volume profiles 7 cities and considers how they have sought to adapt to the challenges of the digital economy.   Instead of drifting with the tide of national economies, these places, their people, their enterprises and institutions, are ‘seizing their destinies’ – finding ways to create local prosperity and solve local social challenges.

This movement towards identifying local initiatives as the key to wider economic revitalisation stands in stark contrast to conventional market sector analysis.

Cities may of course be deserving of special funding to alleviate complex societal and economic challenges (and there are more votes in cities) but all communities – urban or rural – should take note of the need to make a start on adaptation to the digital economy.

Resolving their local ‘digital deficit’ is just a start – it needs several supporting actions – but it is the most obvious platform for rebalancing and revitalising the economy.

Full story here

UPDATE:  (23:00 EST 21 October 2012)  ICF names Smart21 for 2013.

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Professor puts people ahead of process

11 Oct

The business and management systems experts gathered for a conference ‘Energy Process Excellence Europe’ in Aberdeen may not have been expecting the message from Professor Colin Coulson-Thomas.

In a timely reminder of why they were in business he pointed out that it was ‘People and not Process that was the key to success’

His central point was that by understanding the ‘success factors’ all employees could be encouraged to perform as well, if not better, than those in the upper echelons of any large business.   The complexity of modern management, and the availability of often expensive systems to mange processes are often combined to re-engineer outcomes that could, he says, be easily achieved by simpler, selective and better targeted actions to support employees.

He pointed out that the vast majority of customers have little or no concern for an organisation’s structure and processes – they merely want efficient and helpful service.

To this end – putting people before process – he has studied over 2000 organisations and published a large study of the results.

Full story here from Andrew Macdonald, our Management & Technology correspondent

NextGen Challenge: into the final digital furlong

1 Oct

The runners and riders in this year’s NextGen Challenge – the UK awards programme for advanced broadband network projects – are now in the final straight and heading towards the winning post.  The results will be announced at the  NextGen12 conference dinner in the Members’ Dining Room inside the Palace of Westminster.

The entries span the length and breadth of Britain and, in the spirit of ‘Open Access’, the competition was open to all-comers regardless of their technology choices.

The independent judging panel has the task of evaluating entries from projects in four categories – Rural and Community Leadership, Innovative Funding Solutions, Urban Network Enterprise and Collaborative Advantage.

Once again the NextGen Challenge programme demonstrates that enterprise and innovation is alive and well in this most vital of infrastructure investment areas .

Full story (and links for conference and dinner registration) here

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The Connectedness of Policy in a Digital Economy

27 Sep

For all students of the Digital Economy – its impacts and the potential for changing the way we can do things around here – we recommend the FCC’s task force report on mHealth.

This report is not just an example of the awesome lobbying power of the Mobile industry.  It carries the message that regulating the communications industry is about understanding the needs of all sectors of the economy.

Connected Health is an obvious place to start trying to catch up with ideas developed in remote parts of Scandinavia.

At NextGen 12 the session on trends in the mobile industry is being chaired by the Editor of Groupe Intellex,

Full story and link to the mHealth report here

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Deference and Diffidence diluting the digital economy

20 Sep

The shock of realisation – the realisation that permission is not required – may have been novel in the late 1980’s but is still reverberating more than twenty years on.

In this editorial – prompted by examples of modest ambition – we consider whether the highly civilised Anglo-Saxon traits of diffidence and deference are inhibiting growth of our increasingly digitalised economy.

The recent Summer of Olympic endeavour certainly loosened  societal interactions but, in the context of much needed infrastructure investment in Intelligent Cities, is this alone going to relight economic growth?

Full story here

 

The Rise of the Intelligent City and other ‘digital economy’ issues will be centre-stage at NextGen12 – 8th & 9th October, Westminster, London.

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Smartphones: the Remote for controlling your digital economy

14 Sep
In Leonard Cohen’s dark interpretation of the future, (‘things go ‘n slide – slide in all directions’) his fear is that ‘there won’t be nothing you can measure anymore’.
‘Sliding’ is a good word for the conceptual turmoil facing mobile operators.  In this editorial written for Bdaily – the UK’s business news network – we consider measures of mobility, the shift from voice to data apps and the investment needed for the next generation of ‘small cell’ base stations.
The Mobile, we conclude, has become a Remote – a controller for your personal version of the digital economy – and depends on avoiding mobile networks for much of its smartness.
The word ‘sliding’ implies a loss of directional control.   In ‘smartphones and smarter phoners’ we look forward to the debate at NextGen12 when the Mobile Operators Association goes head to head with Rethink Wireless.
Full story here.

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