Showcasing 5G Potential in Silicon Spa
In 2019, I was asked by the University of Warwick to take part in a round table with BT and their Senior Leadership team for 5G . The purpose was to showcase 5G opportunities across Coventry & Warwickshire in healthcare, future mobility, and games. As the lead on Digital Creative for Coventry & Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership (CWLEP), I was called in to present to BT on our ‘Silicon Spa’ games cluster.
You can see the full presentation here. It was a great opportunity to present a journey from our 2016 commissioning of Blueprint for Growth: A Strategy for the Coventry & Warwickshire Games Sector to being selected by the Department of International Trade as the UK’s High Potential Opportunity in Games. The 2019 inaugural Interactive Futures and our creative industries in Coventry & Warwickshire reaching £1.1billion in GVA were also highlights of our collaborative work that made the region an excellent place to invest in future innovation.
BT as a group are an interesting player as they own fixed and mobile infrastructure and they operate consumer content platforms like BT Sports. From the round table, it was clear that the focus was on how the whole of the BT Group could best support next generation products and services and maximise their return on investment with 5G. The mobile networks had learnt from 4G implementation where they funded the infrastructure but did not invest in the applications that made money from the availability of faster mobile data. Think Uber, Deliveroo etc. The future of 5G is more than just faster mobile data; it is the ability to control capacity for an event to ensure 10,000 participants have the same coverage, to prioritise data streams and keep them secure, and to deliver information in real-time.
Leamington is an obvious place for 5G investment, but at the time BT was not convinced it would accelerate its roll-out in the town. Following the round table, BT became a co-sponsor of Warwick University’s Digital & Creative Communities initiative and agreed to fund a test-bed in Leamington at the 1 Mill Street incubator. This investment also became part of the town’s Future High Streets bid and the prospective Strength in Places programme to accelerate the growth of the region’s immersive technology capabilities.
A town that was once at the cutting edge of camouflage where art met science for the protection of the nation during World War Two, I am personally hugely excited to see what the future holds for Silicon Spa as we drive forward into the ‘Experience Age’ ….
