[iSouthEND]

What do we want from you?

What we want you to do is simply tell us what you would be able to do that you cannot currently do, or how your way of working/creating would change and improve if you had access to digital services that are not currently available in Southend. What are the current constraints on your activities? What ideas do you have for the provision of new digital services across Southend? We can provide the technical solutions; we would like you to give us some creative inspiration!

For example, an event held in Chalkwell Park could be shared with other locations either in or out of the town; or distant events which would be otherwise inaccessible to Southend could be relayed to the park or to sites around the town. The facilities could be extended to multi-way video conferences between, say, the DEC in Southend and other centres of excellence for workshops, brainstorming events, digital art exhibitions, theatre, Pecha Coucha and so on.

But there are many other areas where the iSouthEND network could also be valuable: in health and care, in energy conservation, in environmental activities, in community groups and so on.

Please provide feedback to us before the 11th February!!


Detail regarding the iSouthEND study

The iSouthEND TSB funded project is a 3-month feasibility study [3] which provides an opportunity to define the required technical facilities of the Digital Exploration Centre (DEC) [4]by proposing a digital network and services testbed and supporting activities. The objective of the testbed is to provide infrastructure that helps people and businesses to understand and use the latest digital technologies and to develop new digital products and services. It will include a high-speed digital network across Southend-on-Sea that will be available to businesses, commerce, academia, artists and the community.

The first part of the study has been to survey the existing broadband infrastructure in the town and from this, to identify how the infrastructure needs to be improved. This survey has revealed that there is a competitive market in basic broadband (over copper telephone pair cables) with users able to choose between providers and able to receive speeds typically between 2 and 9 Mb/s. Higher speeds delivered over optical fibre cables (known as ‘next generation access’) are also available across the whole of Southend-on-Sea. In this case there is only one provider, Virgin Media, offering a 50 Mb/s service in almost half of postcode areas and 20 Mb/s elsewhere.

Southend-on-Sea therefore enjoys a good level of broadband service by today’s standards. However conventional broadband services can be restrictive for certain types of application because they are asymmetric, with high speeds from the service provider to the user but much lower speeds from the user to the service provider: even the 50 Mb/s service only provides 1.5 Mb/s in the upstream direction. Some applications such as video conferencing and high volume data storage cannot operate successfully over such slow links. Moreover the service quality may be impaired in busy periods because broadband connections are shared. In fact several providers offer a symmetric service which is not shared: these connections can offer better characteristics for the more demanding applications but, because the connection is not shared, the price is much higher and often unaffordable for many businesses.

The iSouthend project proposes to develop a town network that has high capacity, offers symmetrical connections and can be shared by allowing users to schedule uncontended bandwidth for short periods when it is needed. This should fill a gap in the current market provision. The network will provide connectivity between locations within the town, provide access to DEC resources and will also have connections to the Internet and to the JANET education and research network, so making national and international connections possible.
Typical applications might be to relay high quality sound and video for events and exhibitions, demonstrate methods for assisted living or new environmental schemes, provide regular backup for business data and the ability to share knowledge and activities with leading organisations such as the British Library, Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria and other international institutions. The facility will be connected to research facilities at the University of Essex and other research and education centres across the UK.

iSouthEND is a collaboration between Renaissance Southend Ltd, University of Essex and GTel (digital communications specialists). It is funded by the Technology Strategy Board, under the Digital Britain Feasibility Studies competition, and is part of a drive to stimulate innovative business models, applications, services and technologies relating to digital technology. All partners in the iSouthEND project cannot guarantee that any proposals put forward by the Feasibility Study will proceed. However, we are working hard to ensure that our proposals are deliverable, affordable and accessible.

[3] http://www.innovateuk.org/competitio...tystudies.ashx
[4] http://www.renaissancesouthend.co.uk...on-centre.aspx