Superfast Cornwall Labs
Superfast Cornwall Labs is the brand name for the community that is engaged in the key research challenges associated with the roll out of superfast broadband across Cornwall.
Members include Cornwall Development Company, British Telecom, University College Falmouth and selected academic institutions and business representatives.
As the first County to benefit from 40Mbs-100 Mbs broadband there is a real opportunity to develop expertise and capacity to make the most of pervasive ‘superfast’ connections and to open up new opportunities for digital commerce and cultural engagement.
The pervasiveness of the proposed connections promises a greater breadth of inclusion amongst the social and commercial communities distributed across Cornwall’s rural and coastal landscape. Socially, this new infrastructure could connect communities in ways previously not possible, bringing towns, villages and cities together through interactive and connected public spaces. Rich and interactive media events can be shared by village halls across the county. Schools could share their expertise with each other in a county wide network similar but richer to that of C2K in Northern Ireland.
Past increases in connection speed saw step changes of activity in media distribution, social networking and mobile internet consumption. Another order of magnitude increase promises similar step changes with the likelihood of new markets in areas that are digital data rich such as streamed video communication or any of the plethora of applications captured by the notion of the Internet of Things.
The opportunities are there, some imaginable and some to emerge as we explore the match between the needs and challenges across the county and the new capabilities of the digital infrastructure.
More information on the roll-out of superfast broadband can be found here.
Superfast Cornwall Labs is the brand name for the growing community, currently numbering over 100, engaged in the key research challenges associated with the roll out of superfast broadband across Cornwall. Members include University College Falmouth, Cornwall Development Company, British Telecom, the BBC, the UK digital economy research Hubs and selected Cornish businesses.
AIR is playing a leading role in developing the Superfast Cornwall Labs community through the hosting of regular workshops, providing an online platform for the community on the AIR web portal and more recently sponsoring 5 research feasibility studies with local businesses.
The outcomes of the feasibility studies were presented at a public event on 20 February at Tremough and included:
- Supporting a start-up company with a new service that uses broadband to broadcast real-time animation to handheld devices. The project used the motion capture animation equipment installed at Tremough in collaboration with Pinewood studios. The local start-up company will be launching in the national press in March.
- The development of a unique on-line interface for photography ( currently subject to patent applications)
- A test of connection reliability, speed and characteristics to support media post production in Cornwall working with very large files and clients across the globe.
- The development of remote virtual reality delivery for training and safety procedures based on game engine technologies.
- An online crowd-sourcing platform to raise investment for film production
Projects
AIR/BT workshops bring public, private and third sector communities together to explore the commercial and cultural opportunities presented by the roll out of next generation broad band across Cornwall.
This competition is now closed. The outcomes of these feasibility studies will be published in January 2012.
