Post in Broadband access: Wireless Oxford

Aug 05 15:43 UTC

Thanks for that Paul.  I was also Bill Heine's "co-host" yesterday
evening for an hour talking about it.  I was a little reluctant to
open it up to publicity at such an early stage.  We are definitely at
the "question asking" stage still.  But I can't imagine the
publicity, and perhaps especially the way it was framed being mostly
about "digital exclusion" will have done any harm to the cause!  I'm
a great believer in the notion that if the idea stacks up we will
find some way of funding it!

I will watch Click.  I wonder if the ambulance item was in the UK?
In the US they reserve a part of the wifi spectrum for emergency
services and have done work to prove that an emergency vehicle can
travel at 60mph through a built up area with good coverage and remain
connected throughout.  But certainly there are lots of other health
related applications that might push the limits of the technology
less - from laptops in the district nurse's car to in-home monitoring
equipment.

It is these sort of applications that I would like to fund the
system, so it's not grant money but "invest to save" or "invest to
innovate".  Home security appliances, wireless cameras (yuck, but
everyone else seems to love them!), extending the reach of the bus
information points, home working (with what's called "presence" so
you can appear to be at your usual desk to a telephone caller say but
really at home).  So if any of you work or are influential in any of
the big ICT user employers in Oxford your supporting this and
encouraging relevant colleagues to have a think about it would be
very useful!

To me that means - both the universities, all the health trusts, both
the local authorities (and there's no reason why it shouldn't extend
to Kidlington and Botley and maybe link up with what Abingdon's
already doing) at least, plus many private larger ICT users.  We
might even want to make it a sort of a share issue that smaller
investors could join in on.