Over the past decade, and especially in the past five years, there have been a number of national schemes to help low income families with children to get online. The Computers for Pupils scheme started in 2006 and provided grants through local authorities. In Birmingham that money was increased by the voluntary donations to the Birmingham e-Learning Foundation made by recipients.
Over 20,000 families in Birmingham have received devices under the scheme.
Children with PDAs
Good to see the Birmingham Post report highlighting how important increasing broadband speeds is to securing business
for Birmingham http://bit.ly/opltYr Digital Birmingham continues to strive to secure funding to move the project forward.
History provides many examples of great ‘Firsts’. Chuck Yeager – the first person to break the sound barrier by flying faster than the speed of sound; Neil Armstrong – the first man to walk on the moon; Sir Roger Bannister – the first man to break the 4-minute mile; Alexander Bell – first in the race to invent the telephone.
Now I’m not suggesting that taking the first tentative steps towards making Birmingham the first City in the UK to have a Citywide 4G wireless network is even close to flying to the moon, but having being heavily involved with developing the 4G proposal for Birmingham, it does fill me with immense excitement on the glimpse into the future that it holds.
The demand by consumers for data ‘on the go’ is now at an all time high and this demand will only continue to travel in one direction……UP. With more and more businesses and people using smart phones and tablet devices, networks are struggling to meet the demand and 4G technology holds the potential to solve that problem. It also offers potential to enable services to be delivered in new and innovative ways; just imagine …virtual visits from your doctor, real time CCTV on public transport, live streaming of high definition video whilst commuting to work. More – Birmingham unveils it’s 4G plans!
The Saturday before last Digital Birmingham were involved in putting on Local Gov Camp on its return to Birmingham. Actually, my Gov Camp started on the Friday night when 20 or so ne’er do wells turned up early to have a drink in The Anchor followed by a curry at Manzils in Digbeth. Already, it was invigorating to be part of conversations between such committed people.
Local Gov Camp is is run using the unconference format. Here we don’t have any key note speakers, the attendees run their own sessions if they want to and the agenda is decided on the morning, based on people pitching the sessions they want to run.
It’s been a busy three months for the DB team, see attached the first installment of our quarterly update April –
June 2011.
Digital Birmingham is a Birmingham City Council initiative and part of a city wide strategic partnership of more than 40 public, private and voluntary organisations
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