Nick Churchill

I am the Housing & Economy Manager at Canterbury City Council in East Kent. This area incorporates the City of Canterbury and the seaside towns of Whitstable and Herne Bay as well as multiple villages and rural settlements. The council is a major landowner with sites and properties across the district, including the Whitefriars Shopping Centre in Canterbury. We are particularly interested in 5G opportunities for Canterbury given its reputation as a major regional retail centre, its four universities that attract over 40,000 students a year (and numerous other colleges) together with its international status and appeal as an important heritage destination which means that is punches well above its weight in economic terms. The area will also host over 16,000 new homes, major new business parks and urban regeneration/renewal schemes, some within central Canterbury. Despite these market strengths existing mobile phone coverage, speeds and capacity in Canterbury are comparatively poor. We feel the city has enormous potential to improve these features while working towards 5G. We are a landowner, planning authority and an ambitious, commercially minded council so are well positioned to help enable and facilitate the delivery of new 5G led solutions. 5G will be an essential platform to help us deliver services differently and better in the future while allowing a range of new technologies to be rolled to support the academic, business, residential and leisure sectors. If anyone in the 5G community can help us find these solutions we would love to hear from you!