Leeds UK to Host Intelligent Cities Conference on Urban Broadband

The NextGen Events team have released more details about their forthcoming Intelligent Cities Conference in Leeds, which seeks to address the challenges that cities across the United Kingdom face in supporting the latest fixed line superfast broadband, 4G mobile roll-outs and other internet related developments.

The conference itself will take place at The Rose Bowl (Leeds Metropolitan University) on 19th June 2013 and will include presentations from BM, EE, Arup, Cambium Networks, aql, Leeds Data Thing, Cisco, Medtech University of Leeds and Synchronoss Technologies.

A number of other speakers, such as Paul Hadley who is the Deputy Director of Information Economy Industrial Strategy at the government’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), will also be in attendance.

The city of Leeds was chosen to hold the conference for a number of reasons, not least the fact that both it and Bradford recently won £14.4 million from the government’s Urban Broadband Fund (UBF). The new “super-connected cities” investment is primarily intended to help support the roll-out of “ultrafast” (80-100Mbps) broadband ISP services and “high speed public wi-fi“ into otherwise neglected areas.

Since then Virgin Media has also begun rolling out a new free city wi-fi network that aims to cover over 1.2 million citizens in Leeds and Bradford (here).

Lurene Joseph, CEO of Leeds and Partners, added:

“The Intelligent Cities conference will enable us to provide a platform for a more dynamic creative sector and encourage inward investment which can accelerate the digital transformation occurring within the city.

The availability of ultra-fast connectivity within the city is a major attraction as we demonstrate that we are digitally enabled for businesses and the conference will allow engagement with the stakeholders delivering information and services to support future economic growth within the region across key sectors such as health innovation, financial and professional services and the wider economy.”

The conference is primarily a business focused event and costs £50 +vat to attend. Delegates who wish to register can do so now (here). The event is just one of three NextGen conferences taking place this year including Digital Scotland 2013 on 22nd May and the two day NextGen13 conference in London on 14th and 15th October 2013.