The UK Telecoms Innovation Network (UKTIN) has been established to help the UK build on its existing strengths, overcoming fragmentation within the sector and providing a smoother path to growth.
The network convenes expertise from across the UK telecoms research, development and innovation ecosystem, bringing distinct specialisms and knowledge pools together, and strengthening working relationships between industry, government stakeholders, and academia.
Through broad-ranging stakeholder engagement and critical mass community engagement structures, we provide coordinated, open, impartial and community-driven recommendations and support towards policy and R&D interventions by the government.
The UKTIN Strategic Groups aim to boost collaboration and partnership, opening up new opportunities for innovation. By consulting widely across the telecoms innovation ecosystem, they will strive to understand the needs of all parties, aligning and cohesively communicating these needs.
In developing their recommendations the Strategic Groups, as well as the Expert Working Groups, must take full account of telecom marketplace priorities for companies: large and small; incumbent and challenger; in the supply, deployment and delivery chains; and especially for operators-fixed and mobile-and their customers.
Initially they will consider the objectives of the market in three broad areas:
Concerned mainly with managing and reducing the operating cost of the network in terms of power consumption and general network operational resource utilisation, while maintaining or increasing quality of service
Attracting challengers to the telco space, including shared network / shared spectrum operators, neutral host providers, alt-net fibre providers, new generation satellite (NTN) providers, and potentially TowerCos with shared network operational capability, and associated system integrators
The challenges may additionally be concerned with local deployment tools and planning for coverage, capacity (especially uplink capacity), low latency, local applications support, integration and seamless interoperation with existing public networks
Taking inputs from the UKTIN Expert Working and other groups, the UKTIN Telecoms Industry Diversification Coordination Group and the UKTIN Academic Future Networks Strategy Group will coordinate and align activity and planning relating to the telecoms diversification strategy, research, development and innovation opportunities and challenges, and leveraging fundamental research areas. The groups will provide insights into telecoms activity across all TRLs that will be fed into the UKTIN Telecoms R&D Future Capability Strategic Leadership Forum, which will synthesise inputs, align findings and build new bridges between industry and academia.
The UKTIN Cross-Government Telecoms Strategic Coordination Group has ultimate responsibility for aligning all inputs and themes, and acts as an informed advisor to policy teams, providing a coherent and informed voice to the government.
In turn, this will help inform and support the development of a UK telecoms R&D policy, creating a shared public and private sector strategic vision, facilitating cross-government alignment on telecoms policy, and shaping a regulatory and political environment which is conducive to a thriving and resilient telecoms industry.