“Is this government doing all it can to ensure the UK economy benefits from this trillion-pound market of the future?”

This was a question raised by Chi Onwurah, MP for Newcastle upon Tyne and shadow minister for business innovation and skills, in a blog post on ePolitix this week. After returning from the Intelligent Community Forum’s annual summit in New York, there are many parallels being made between what Onwurah talks about and the aims of the ICF.

Some two billion people regularly use the internet, and this figure continues to rise. But the next stage in the internet ‘revolution’ so to speak, is through machine-to-machine (M2M) communication and how the internet can be used to benefit people’s lives and the economy in other ways.

M2M will enable what is called the internet of ‘things’ where machines, as well as people, connect to each other, he explains. “In salmon, so that we can track their response to global warming; in rivers and wetlands to monitor the state of our environment; in bridges, checking for cracks; in transported goods, to reduce theft; in electricity meters so we can save energy; in credit cards so that we can have contactless payment; in fridges, so that they can automatically order more vegetables for us; and even in our bodies if we are unwell and may need medical assistance.”

So are we doing enough as a nation to make sure we fully exploit the opportunities the internet brings us? And importantly “why are we not seeing radio spectrum made available on a licence-free basis – as was recently done in the US – so UK companies large and small can get on with the job of innovating in this hugely important area and making sure we all reap the rewards?”

It’s that time of year again when I drag myself away from Cheshire and head to New York as UK ambassador for the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) to attend the annual Building Broadband Economies Summit. Each year, the ICF names the Top 7 Intelligent Communities from across the world that have developed inclusive prosperity on a foundation of information and communications technology. This year’s theme is Health in Intelligent Communities, and the awards process has looked at efforts by local government, institutions and businesses to improve the delivery and management of healthcare using information and communications technology in order to:

• Create business opportunities for local employers

• Reduce costs

• Enhance the health of residents

What was great for Aerelink was that Dundee, which featured in the Top 7 Intelligent community list in 2007 thanks to a project carried out by Aerelink, features in this year’s white paper. With high-speed connectivity alongside high-quality universities, Dundee has managed to build a dynamic and entrepreneurial economy, which was recognised by the ICF. Today, several projects incorporating science, technology and life sciences continue to create jobs, attract talent and build the city’s economy. One such program is the Innovation Portal, which helps to encourage competition among local businesses through knowledge transfer. Another is BioDundee, which promotes the city as an internationally recognised hub for life sciences.

This year’s summit and award ceremony will take place in New York from June 1^st to 3^rd, so watch this space for a roundup of my trip.

It’s been several years since Aerelink’s work with Dundee City Council saw it named 7^th Intelligent Community in the World by the Intelligent Communities Forum (ICF, the New York-based think tank) and this year failed to see any UK cities making it onto the list.

The UK is falling behind – the World Economic Forum (WEF) published a report this week that ranked the UK 15^th in terms of “networked readiness”, behind the likes of  Sweden, Singapore, Finland, Switzerland, the USA, Taiwan, China, Denmark, Canada, Germany … you get the idea.

According to the WEF, these countries are the most competitive in terms of their digital economies, and are best at using ICT technologies to help them to grow.

The ICF describes ‘intelligent communities’ are those which have “come to understand the enormous challenges of the Broadband Economy, and have taken conscious steps to create an economy capable of prospering in it. They are not necessarily big cities or famous technology hubs.  They are located in developing nations as well as industrialised ones, suburbs as well as cities, the hinterland as well as the coast.”

If we know that connected and digitally aware communities are so important to help economies to grow and recover after a crisis, then why is the UK so far down the list?

It seems that not everyone is on the same page when it comes to shared services. With all of the cuts that organisations are facing, it presents itself as an obvious solution. Why purchase multiple products when existing infrastructure is not being maximised to its full potential? However, according to Gary Flood, writing for Public Technology, some local authorities are doing it better than others.

“One man’s shared service is not the same, it seems, as the next one’s,” he explains. “Some may be doing things like sharing a chief executive or their HR department while only a very few are doing anything more substantial, like sharing ICT back office systems.”

He went on to state that shared services on their own would not be sufficient to save the amounts of money that need to be cut.

At Aerelink, we’ve worked with a number of local authorities and organisations to help reduce costs through shared services. And it’s not just back office systems that can be joined up. CCTV systems, VoIP and telephony as well as data networks can all be run over the same infrastructure without the need for separate networks. In some cases, ongoing revenue costs have been halved when a hybrid network replaces a traditional leased line provider. Even if it doesn’t cover the deficit from cost cutting, it’s surely a more positive alternative to losing frontline staff?

Like Aerelink, many businesses will be chomping at the bit to show their support for the new Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs). In fact, in fairness to ourselves and other like-minded companies, the only thing standing in our way right now is the speed at which Government moves – which is not quick enough. Hopefully the announcement of a spring summit to galvanise growth at a regional level will give the entire initiative some much-needed momentum.

In the meantime, the team at Aerelink will continue with its advocacy of the New York-based think-tank the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), and our work with Liverpool Hope University, Knowsley Enterprise Academy, Enterprise Halton and Young Enterprise North West. And from a CSR and commercial perspective, we will support other local authorities as they seek to create highly-successful projects that have an impact on the communities and regions in which they are based. We’ve always known that small business can impact on the wider society. It was just a matter of time before Government cottons on to the big idea.

At Aerelink we are firm believers in broadband as a community enabler. We are advocates of a broadband economy and of creating intelligent communities. (It was one of the reasons we became involved with the New York think tank the Intelligent Community Forum). This is why, when I read Experts Link Economy And Broadband Adoption in the National Journal, it underlined what we already believe are the key issues we are yet to address in the UK, especially around making broadband more affordable.

Michael Powell, former chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission, stated at the Internet Innovation Alliance that communities can only take advantage of a cutting-edge internet to create a knowledge economy if education issues are addressed. However, according to Craig Moffett, industry analyst at Sanford Bernstein, education is being held up by the affordability of broadband. Herein lies the dilemma.

“Broadband affordability is a bigger problem than broadband availability,” he explained. Currently, broadband penetration in the US has plateaued at around 60 per cent. In the UK, a country that is much smaller in terms of both size and population, the statistics are similar, and Race Online 2012 hopes to get 100 per cent of people connected to the internet by two years’ time. At the Aerelink roundtable that was held at Pall Mall in September, Callum Knowles, director at Regional Network Solutions and member of the Eurim Information Governance and Conservative Technology Forum, said the same thing; “many people have access to broadband but they can’t afford to use it.”  He cited 300,000 copper lines being ‘returned’ as pay-as-you-go mobiles were considered more cost-effective by low-income families. Access is one thing, but not if people can’t afford it.

The internet needs to be more affordable, and the public sector needs to wake up to more sustainable ways of providing access to communities. Currently, market price for broadband is set by network operators, so local authorities need to look for new ways to lower the costs. The best investments are made when budgets are tight. The budget cuts are the perfect opportunity for local authorities to produce and work on great projects like Dundee – one of the top seven Intelligent Communities in the world. Aerelink is working to become a major player in this challenge and alongside Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK), will work to make the best use of the £530m available to increasing broadband access and connectivity for households, business and communities in poorly served areas across the UK.

I recently invited Taneli Tikka to an event in Liverpool. 32-year-old entrepreneur Taneli is a household name in his native Finland, where he is CTO of his most recent successful enterprise, Dopplr, which he sold to Nokia for $20 million.

Speaking in a press interview during his Liverpool trip, Taneli drew some very interesting parallels between London’s Silicon Roundabout, recently highlighted by David Cameron, and Liverpool’s Software City model, which Taneli feels is probably more appropriate. His comments have helped bring the Manchester / Liverpool Digital Creative agglomeration to a wider audience, being quoted in an FT article on the emergence of Liverpool as a relevant global hub for the sector.

Over my six years in the region, I’ve seen an area with a real density of talent. Rippleffect, Mando and New Mind, for example, are real digital media businesses with depth; Aerelink is a nationally relevant service provider; Bizarre Creations and QIRE are propositions of global import. Diversity is the region’s strength, and I think the world is really starting to take notice.

To see a video interview with Taneli Tikka at the Software City event on November 25th, please click here.

Radiators across the country have been cranked up and kettles were working overload to warm frost-bitten hands over this last week as temperatures dropped under the blanket of snow. And no matter whether people live or work in towns, cities or rurally in the UK, everyone is entitled to the same level of service from their utility providers. So why should access to broadband be any different?

In November I read an interesting article by the editor of Public Technology Jon Wilcox, who stressed the importance of ICT infrastructure, especially during times of economic downturn.

“While construction of roads – tangible infrastructures – has helped shift the doldrums of recessions and depressions past, it seems the importance of the online economy and network infrastructure is almost being ignored or delayed by government,” he states.

He is completely right. And surely the government is of the same opinion when they put time and money (and their name) into policies such as superfast broadband and Race Online 2012?

We believe that broadband access should be treated as an equally-valuable and essential utility as running water and electricity. Broadband provides education, the opportunity to generate wealth and commercial advantage. But as Wilcox adds, will we ever see the infrastructure put in place to see broadband become a “welfare benefit”?

The Government needs to look at the infrastructure it is investing in, not whether to invest at all.

From housing associations to police authorities, there seems to only be one topic dominating talk about the public sector. How are we going to cut costs but still provide effective services? The Scottish Police Services Authority (SPSA), which was featured this week on Public Technology Net, is a prime example of a situation in which local authorities can cut their costs. We are going to see a huge growth in what should have been done from the outset – shared services.

Previously, in the public sector departments were awarded their own budgets, and if they weren’t spent, they lost them. It wasn’t in their interest to save money by sharing services, but when you look at the structure of ICT in local authorities, it makes perfect sense.

The SPSA is made up if 250 sites across the country, 12,000 laptops and PCs and 21,000 handheld radios. Since introducing shared services over the past three years, the SPSA has saved more than £5 million in savings over the past three years.

But this isn’t limited to police authorities. Local councils will run CCTV, urban traffic management controls, broadband and data services like VoIP but all over separate networks, leased from different people, at uneconomical costs. What we will begin to see – and we are already working on with several local authority clients at the moment – is anchor tenants, such as a local council, investing in their own network and running multiple services over it.

If you drill down to the costs, there are hundreds of thousands per year to be saved, and even money to be made. The communications models of local authorities will have to change, and proving money will be made in the process is the only way that they will be able to access money to fund it.

Fostering business acumen among young people is something myself and Aerelink are very passionate about. As someone who made their mark as a young apprentice, I feel very strongly about supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs – who are the key to reviving local communities in times of economic austerity.

This is why I am glad to see events like Global Entrepreneurship Week, which will be taking place in the UK and beyond between 15th and 21st November. Peter Jones, chair of Enterprise UK, sums this up perfectly when he explains why the week takes place: “Entrepreneurs are not born, they are made. Entrepreneurship is a skill that can be taught just like any other. That’s why Global Entrepreneurship Week is so vital right now; To inspire thousands of people to pursue their ideas, to create jobs and to build global ambition among young people and business owners alike.”

Earlier this month, Aerelink’s non-executive director Steve Smith from Liverpool Vision and I took part in a Dragons’ Den-themed event at Liverpool Hope University. Six graduates pitched their ideas to an industry panel for the chance to win a cash prize and to showcase their business idea on 25th November at Software City.

The young entrepreneurs that took part will get the change to meet and network with some inspirational business minds at the Software City event, which features presenters from Finland, Silicon Valley and the UK.

See the photo of Steve Swift and Steve Smith with the young entrepreneurs that took part here.