Industry news

Surrey County Council has selected BT to deliver superfast broadband to the region in a contract worth £33 million.

The service will supply 90,000 homes and businesses with broadband speeds of up to 80Mbps. The contract is the latest in a series of broadband procurement successes as councils seek to develop IT infrastructure and broadband speeds.

The Council has estimated that the new service could increase the local economy by £28 million annually, with almost complete coverage of superfast broadband expected by the end of 2014.

Peter Marin, Surrey’s deputy leader, said: ““This will be a great boost for business, from start-ups in small offices through to multi-nationals. It can be crucial to the continued success of Surrey businesses and a huge attraction to those looking to move in.”

Companies including Twitter, Virgin Media and O2 have raised concerns regarding the government’s draft of the Communications Data Bill.

The bill would require communication service providers to keep details and records of usage if requested by law enforcement.

Twitter raised issues regarding the practicality and legality of the bill as it would see companies holding UK customer data outside of the country.

The internet service providers trade association (ISPA) raised concerns regarding the disadvantages that the bill posed to commerce: “Far too much discretion is given to the Home Secretary without the necessary Parliamentary oversight to ensure that significant changes proposed are proportionate and necessary.”

Sitel has been awarded Global Standard Accreditation from the CCA a leading authority on customer contact strategies and operations.

Launched in 2001, the Global Standard© is a key set of principles defined by industry experts, assessed every three years to ensure continual improvement to customer service.

Independent auditors for the CCA carried out a rigorous assessment of Sitel’s contact centres in Newcastle upon Tyne, Stratford upon Avon and Watford, with sites in Exeter and Kingston upon Thames also evaluated.

Rob Pike, Chair of the CCA Standards Council said: “We are delighted to announce that Sitel has met the CCA Global Standard. This honour is a clear recognition of the commitment and drive demonstrated by Sitel in working towards improving standards and customer experience across the organisation.”

The new service will be delivered by Everything Everywhere, now rebranded as EE, to four UK cities during the testing phase.

While EE users will have access to the new service under that ‘superfast’ brand, current Orange and T-Mobile users will not, when the new service goes live.

London, Bristol, Cardiff, and Birmingham have now all received the 4G network which will now undergo stress-testing. Mayor of London Boris Johnson said: “We are now the city with the greatest 4G coverage anywhere in the world".

4G with potential speeds of 21Mbps is expected to have 98 percent UK population coverage by 2014.

The delivery of 4G services by EE has been widely criticised by the mobile operator’s competitors and the UK government has had to negotiate a one month pause on any legal action, due to the threat of delay.

Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei have stated that they intend to invest £1.2 billion within the UK within the next five years.

Ren Zhengfei, founder and CEO of Huawei, said in a meeting with David Cameron, that the company would spend £6 million on local procurement with a further £6 million on research and development in the country.

Zhengfei said: ‘‘The UK is a centre of innovation, has a highly skilled workforce, and is respected internationally for the quality of its legal and educational systems. It is for these reasons we have selected the UK as the location for a number of our centres of excellence.”

Huawei currentely employs 800 people within the UK, with plans to expand this number to 1,500 by 2017.

The Surrey Police Authority have finalised their exit from the Business Partnering for Police Programme, having suspended their involvement in the shared services programme in July.

The shared services scheme saw the Surrey Police enter into an IT and support shared services scheme, with the West Midlands Police Authority.

The Authority’s decision came after G4S, as one of the main shared services contractor, failed to deliver on the Olympic contract.

Surrey Police Authority said: "Potential PCC candidates are now actively campaigning to put a stop to the Business Partnering for Police Programme and the Authority agreed that it would be not be prudent to continue to invest Surrey tax payers’ money in a programme that seems unlikely to be brought to a fruitful conclusion."

Liverpool Football Club have migrated its website services to a public cloud infrastructure on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The new cloud platform will allow for increase traffic spikes and extra storage capacity, which Liverpool FC require with large traffic spikes during game times.

The AWS service will also allow for scalable performance, ensuring that the company can reduce the performance and the price of the service during off-peak times.

Michael Crowder, systems and development manager at Liverpool FC said: “We now have a more stable scalable and accountable platform, which is well set to cope with the business needs of the new season and beyond.”

A report from government agencies Creative Scotland and Scottish Enterprise, which reported that the Scottish games industry contributed little to the economy, has been widely criticised for inaccuracies.

The report also found that the industry only employed 200 people, this figure clashes with the UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE) Association, which stated that the games industry employed 500 professionals and generated at least £40 million, with more than £1billion generated over the last five years.

Labour MP Jenny Marra, said ““It should be ripped up and started again. It grossly underestimates the value of our games sector”.

The UKIE said: “In light of the anomalous report, UKIE has also called for better gathering and analysis of statistics for the entire UK’s games and interactive entertainment industry.”

Maria Miller has been attacked by the Local Government Association (LGA) for allowing broadband providers to deploy street cabinets without local council consultation.

Maria Miller has said in the past that it is essential to sweep “away the red tape that is a barrier to economic recovery.” However the decision to remove control from local councils and give power instead to private companies has been attacked by the LGA.

The association said in a statement: “Decisions on where to place broadband infrastructure must consider the impact on local environments rather than simply suit the convenience of companies and their engineers.”

Google has invested $150 million in the construction of a new facility in Chile.

The facility will act as a data center and will be the first Google data centre in South America, with six centers in the USA and two in Europe.

The facility will employ 200 workers in the construction and 20 permanent staff members involved in IT, engineering and technical support.

The facility is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2013 as internet usage increases in South America.