Milton Keynes Council is teaming up with BT, Neul, Future Cities and Connected Digital Economics Catapults to to establish a city-wide open access Internet of Things (IoT) network designed to act as a test bed for future projects.
Milton Keynes is one of the first cities in the UK to sign the 18-month project supported by the Open University, aimed at building a M2M white space network with static and mobile sensors.
The firms will install 15 Neul Weightless base stations across Milton Keynes to create a test bed, which will be connected to the internet to pick up signals from sensors in thousands of objects throughout the city, allowing the council and other organisations to try out IoT applications.
“Milton Keynes is already known as a pioneer in the use of technology to make our city more efficient, as evidenced by the current MK:Smart project,” said Geoff Snelson, director of strategy at Milton Keynes Council.
“This agreement demonstrates our commitment to extending that to a city-wide level of access. As well as providing a test-bed for our own specific use cases, this will bring new innovation and business development to the city, creating an ecosystem of IoT development.”
Snelson said that the agreement aims to promote innovation and attract global companies and other innovators to use the established infrastructure as testing ground for new services and start-ups.
BT and Neul are working together on white space trials since last year. Neul said that the network for testing IoT initiatives will open up a range of local possibilities as over the next 18 months, the firms will extend the trial from public recycling bins and parking spaces to a wide range of things including water meters and central heating systems in a real world environment.
“We’re excited to be announcing the first dedicated, city-wide network for the IoT here in the UK,” said Neul chief executive Stan Boland. “Neul’s low-power, open-access, wide-area network solution provides the key to unlocking a vast variety of new applications, previously impossible or uneconomical with existing communications technologies.”
