Record number of entries reflects growth as the UK economy becomes increasingly digitalised

The shortlisted finalists for the UK’s 2013 Next Generation Digital Challenge awards have been announced today. The awards showcase the best in next generation digital access infrastructure innovation and run alongside the annual NextGen Conference – the UK’s leading event for Next Generation broadband activity.

This year there has been a record number of entries underlining recent research reports suggesting the UK economy has far more digital enterprises (and jobs) than previously reported in government data. The 2013 awards includes three new categories for enterprises and projects in digital skills, digital innovation and open data, to reflect the growing utilisation of infrastructure investment in urban, rural and mobile connectivity.

All finalists are now invited to prepare a case study summary submission to the independent judging panel. The judging panel will review every entry and apply a standard marking scheme that assesses the complexity of the challenge, the extent of innovation and the evidence of achievement.

The annual Next Generation Digital Challenge Awards process started in February with an open call for nominations. The finalist’s case studies will be presented in a special session at NextGen13 prior to the conference dinner and awards ceremony on October 14th.

Two key sponsors for the 2013 awards are the Knowledge Transfer Network for ICT and Go ON UK. The former facilitates the UK’s innovation communities to connect, collaborate and find out about new opportunities in key research and technology sectors. The latter is an organisation aiming to make the UK the world’s most digitally skilled nation.

NG Events Director, Marit Hendriks, said, “We are delighted with the surge in response this year, underlining the themes we mapped out in our paper on Economic Revitalisation and our input in June to the Intelligent Community Forum’s annual summit in New York.”

The award entries and a full shortlist of successful entries is available here.

Shortlisted Finalists
Next Generation Digital Challenge Awards 2013

Digital Innovation Category – Sponsored by ICT KTN
Digitonic – a mobile marketing agency
Keypoint Technologies – making text input easier for users
PocketApp – personal medical diagnostics and health guide
Polkadot Factory– Trigah Project – boosting cinema going by more accurate distribution to audiences
Seetok Ltd – a video messaging product to humanise communiication
Mobbra – improving massive use of mobiles at sporting and other major events

Digital Skills Category – sponsored by Go ON UK
ConnectMK – low-cost computer loan scheme re-utilising old ICT kit from large employers
Digital Housing Hub – bringing social housing and digital inclusion projects together
Glasgow Housing Association – improving the digital skills of social housing tenants
Intergenerational Project – library-based ICT courses for over-50’s run by young people
Social Media Surgeries – sharing digital skills in an informal setting
Skills@Work – mobile based learning for business compliance requirements

Fixed Rural Networks Category
Cotswolds Broadband – an innovative approach to raising investment for digital infrastructure
Emtelle – supporting alternative operators like B4RN
Essex County Council – programmes in both infrastructure and skills to give the county an economic boost
Synchronoss Technologies – showing how local authorities can get better value for public funding of broadband
Tove Valley – rural Fibre to the Premises scheme
Village Networks – overcoming copper line deficiencies with wireless

Fixed Urban Networks Category
Accelerate Aberdeen, Abderdeen City Council – improved digital connectivity for the city and surrounding area
CityFibre – fibre to the premises for businesses and households
Hyperoptic – delivering 1Gb/s ultrafast broadband to apartments
KCOM – fibre to the premises in Hull and East Yorkshire
Magnet Networks – enabling the Smart City of Wembley
MS3 – fibre choice and competition for business users in Hull

Mobile and other Wide-Area Networks Category
Digital Birmingham – large-scale public WiFI for the City
Calnex – boosting 4G/LTE deployments with better testing kit
Airband Community Internet and Cambium Networks – improving broadband in rural Worcestershire
SES Broadband – a satellite broadband solution for rural areas
Open Signal – using crowd-sourcing for info on performance of mobile networks to make customer choices easier
Stream communications – improving the resilience of mobile networks

Open Data Category
eeGeo – a 3D mapping service using live data feeds
HPC Wales – high performance supercomputing for businesses
opencorporates – making data on companies easier to access
REgenerate – support for communities to build Open Data sources.
Food Trade – boosting markets for small suppliers
Transfaction – performance measures for transport networks