There are huge innovation and growth opportunities in the UK’s telecoms sector, according to Ian Smith, head of UK Telecoms Innovation Network (UKTIN), the innovation network for the UK’s telecoms sector. But, he warned that those ideas and opportunities can only be realised if matched with the right level of investment.
Smith has worked in telecoms for more than 30 years. After starting in naval shore telecoms, he joined One2One in 1997, where he worked on network design build and engineering. From there, he joined Eriksson as head of networks before becoming programme director for the 5G testbeds and trials programme for the department for digital, culture, media and sport in 2018. In 2022, he was appointed chief technology officer at Quickline Communications prior to moving to UKTIN in April 2024.
UKTIN’s focus is on bringing together industry, academia, and research and development, advising government on potential policy initiatives and putting SMBs looking for investment in their projects in contact with investors, as well as being the voice of industry. It is funded by government and comprises four consortium partners: Cambridge Wireless, Digital Catapult, the University of Bristol and West Midlands 5G.
“Our aim is to join everything up,” said Smith. “We provide the space for industry, academia, and research and development to come together for the greater good of innovation.“We have so many brilliant universities and colleges here in the UK with so many bright people doing such great work, but we don’t have the required investment to convert those ideas and innovations into commercial products that consumers want to buy. That’s where UKTIN comes in – to provide that link between innovation and investment.”
Among the biggest challenges currently facing the telecoms industry, Smith said, are balancing the costs of building and deployment new networks with continuing to attract investment, generating revenue and remaining sustainable. Added to that, he said, is the wave of mergers between operators and companies increasingly outsourcing operations, thus the market is inevitably becoming more squeezed.
Informing government
With the new government’s immediate focus on improving people’s lives through initiatives such as the greater adoption of technology, Smith said UKTIN’s role is to advise the decision makers on policies that will enable industry, academia, and research and development to deliver on.
Rather than having a wide range of different parties lobbying government on various matters, he said that by having one unified voice, UKTIN can clearly advise them on the right policy strategies and frameworks for the wider telecoms space in areas such as AI, cybersecurity, future networks and wireless, to name a few.
A prime example of government intervention, said Smith, is Project Gigabit, which aims to provide high-speed connectivity to remote and hard to reach areas throughout the UK. The £5 billion scheme, which is run by Building Digital UK, has increased gigabit broadband coverage across the country to 81 per cent.
“Project Gigabit has been a great success,” said Smith. “It has meant that, all of a sudden, people in these areas can now work from home and it has also opened up tremendous business opportunities.”
In terms of opportunity, Smith said that telecoms has multiple applications, from using AI in healthcare to improve patient outcomes to speeding up manufacturing processes and making agri-tech more effective.
He said that the results have been transformative, in many cases.Even initiatives such as the PSTN switchover and the shutdown of 2G and 3G networks should be viewed as an opportunity, said Smith. However, he believes that government should establish a concerted programme to manage the migrations.
“Much like the 700MHz clearance programme in 2017, we need a similar structured programme for the copper switch-off,” said Smith.
“The implications of the turning off 2G alone will be huge, not only for smart device users, but for all the IoT in infrastructure such as bus stops that we take for granted, so we need an effective programme that will ensure the successful transition to 4G and 5G technologies.”
Next gen telecoms professionals
Moving forward, Smith said that telecoms needs to move away from selling products and services based on their speed and focus more on how they can improve the user’s experience.
He said that’s evidenced by the fact that consumers and businesses are more concerned about how well the service they are receiving is performing for them rather than how fast it’s operating.
There’s also the need, said Smith, to bring new talent into the industry. By making it a more attractive and exciting proposition, and explaining how the technology works, he said that, with government help, the sector can start to entice the next generation of telecoms professionals.
This interview was included in our November 2024 print issue. You can read the magazine in full here.