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The Northern Powerhouse is the UK government’s response to the demand from businesses, organisations and communities that there needs to be a little more focus on investment outside of the capital and beyond the South of England. It is made up of six of the UK’s northern cities – Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Hull and Newcastle.

From Lahore, Shanghai and New York City, to Barcelona, Manchester and Milton Keynes, we’re seeing an exponential rise in the number of smart cities being ‘created’ globally, with the intention of making citizens’ lives more convenient, secure and sustainable.

Last week saw Bristol unlock its doors to a well-connected future with the Bristol | Sweden Future Cities Summit, which centred on how to become a truly smart city. With a raft of inspiring speakers ranging from Bristol City Council and Bristol Energy to Volvo and Business Sweden, the event was a positive and productive day focused on how to achieve the city’s main objective: to take charge of its digital destiny.

Whether it’s stories about people being treated like ‘lab rats in a surveillance experiment’ or research claiming that up to 20 million global manufacturing jobs could be replaced by robots in the next ten years, it would seem that technology being designed to enhance our lives is receiving constant criticism and demonisation.

With the UK desperately far behind Europe in the deployment of Full Fibre to the premises FTTP, Total Telecom met up with Richard Watts to discuss how the market has responded and what needs to happen to meet the government targets for full coverage.

The UK has moved from FTTP penetration levels of 1% to 7% over the last six months – is fibre deployment happening quickly enough or do we need to pick up the pace? Any progress in the expansion of full fibre networks across the UK should be applauded.  However, the market is currently 93% slow copper putting the UK in 27th place out of 54 countries worldwide, and second from bottom in Europe.

Mikael Sandberg discusses how installing a truly full-fibre broadband connection in a property doesn’t just benefit the homebuyer but the housebuilder too. See full article in Showhouse Magazine – Broadband Supplement.

5G is the talk of the telecoms industry right now, with 5G networks launching in the US and South Korea. But many don’t realise that 5G isn’t possible without fixed high-speed fibre connectivity. This is where the UK struggles at the moment. According to FTTH Council Europe, nationwide UK fibre penetration is woefully inadequate.

The market for full fibre broadband access in the UK is at an inflection point. Can altnets reach the parts that Openreach and BT cannot reach? At the end of April, AIM-listed UK alternative network provider (altnet) CityFibre recommended to its shareholders that they accept a £538m takeover by an investment consortium backed by Goldman Sachs.

The 1 gigabit per second speeds would make a big impact for internet users in the Potteries. The city council plans to build one of the fastest broadband networks in the country – thanks to £9.2 million of Government funding. Stoke-on-Trent City Council says the ‘full fibre’ project will provide residents and businesses with internet speeds in excess of 1 gigabit per second, potentially giving the local economy a multi-million pound boost.