Telecoms industry pioneer stresses value of the internet

THE UK should be treating the internet “almost as a fifth utility” like China, Japan and Korea, according to a pioneering figure in the mobile telecommunications industry.

Dr Mike Short, who is vice president for public affairs at O2 owner Telefonica Europe, urged the Government to adopt a rolling five-year plan to improve the UK’s infrastructure.

The current president of the Institute of Engineering and Technology said: “So when I look at the five-year plan for China, the whole broadband adoption and internet adoption is treated as something that is as important as water, as important as energy, and I think we need as the UK to be looking at that pro-investment model, that pro-innovation model, almost as if it’s the fifth utility.”

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He was speaking at the latest Yorkshire Post Business Club event in Leeds, alongside Herb Kim, chief executive of Sunderland-based Codeworks – a not for profit company which helps to develop and promote the digital industries of North East England. Mr Kim, a Princeton University graduate from Brooklyn, New York, established the North East’s annual Thinking Digital conference.

O2 is one of the biggest employers in Leeds, employing close to 3,000 people or 25 per cent of its UK workforce.

Dr Short and Mr Kim spoke about the shift towards using the internet via a mobile phone. Mr Kim said: “Looking at our latest stats both on website usage and on email, the shift to mobile is remarkable.” This year, his company built a website designed with a “mobile first strategy”, he said. Fifty per cent of the people who read a recent email shot it sent out are reading it on a phone, said Mr Kim, who continued: “It is clearly a precursor of things to come.”

At the end of last year, there were about 1.5bn fixed lines, but 6bn mobile phones in use, explained Dr Short. Meanwhile, by the end of March next year, there will be more phones than people globally, he said. The majority of internet usage in Western Europe is from mobile now, said Dr Short. “So what we’ve got is two huge innovation platforms coming together, mobile and the internet, and on those two innovation platforms we are seeing enormous innovation.”

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Dr Short spoke of the “transformational value” of the internet, and said that mobile will be the “main way” people access the internet. This digital approach opens up new opportunities for all sectors, said Dr Short.

He spoke of the possibility of having access to patient records remotely in the healthcare sector; making use of real-time information in the transport sector to avoid congestion; and the trend towards using smart meters in the energy sector.

Dr Short said: “There’s European legislation coming in in 2014 to say that every new car should be connected. That’s to do with safety – alerting an emergency authority in the event of an accident.

“But that starts to bring in other things, if you can alert the emergency services, why can’t you alert the maintenance man? Why can’t you alert the garage to say I need help?” We are starting to move into “a world of smart cities and intelligent cities where connectedness can give better information to the public as well as to the town authorities”, said Dr Short.

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With regard to social media, Mr Kim said organisations have to establish what works for their audience. He said: “For our audience, Twitter really is resonant, whereas Facebook, a lot less so. But if we were a consumer products company we might say this Twitter thing is good for the geeks and the nerds but for our regular folk, they are all on Facebook so let’s go there.”

Dr Short said: “In practice, we are a little country called the UK with a great tradition. Some of that innovation that does come from the UK actually may be built on that history of that tradition. It may not be so manufacturing orientated as it once was but certainly in terms of software, in terms of the creative industries, in terms of internet we are very strong. The UK is still a world leader in e-commerce, a world leader in many of the creative industries, certainly in terms of wi-fi penetration, mobile.” When embracing digital, the important thing for Governments is to use advice from the science and engineering communities, and think about pilots and trials, while avoiding scaling up projects too fast, he said.