The UK Government’s newly established Critical Imports Council aims to lessen the disturbance of essential goods flow from unpredictable global supply chain disruptions. Business and Trade Minister, Alan Mak, highlights strengthening critical goods supply against real-world crises through collaborative efforts with industry experts. With representation from diverse sectors including telecommunications, the council will focus on assessing risks and creating robust mitigation strategies.
The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has raised alarms regarding the possibility of a collusion among a handful of American tech giants, aiming to manipulate the AI market in their favor. The focus of their worry centers on the control exerted by these companies over the development and commercialization of foundation models (FMs), with Open AI’s GPT being a prominent example.
Snom, the premium brand for IP based communications, is celebrating a successful year in business after reaping the rewards of its international outlook. This year, Snom’s business skyrocketed in both Spain and Italy. In other European regions, such as France, the United Kingdom and DACH, the manufacturer preserved its market share and it also increased its presence in the Middle East.
Project Gigabit, an ambitious initiative from the UK government, is rapidly enhancing the nation’s digital connectivity across rural locales. Recent updates from this £5 billion venture depict encouraging progress, with a significant leap in gigabit broadband coverage from 6% in 2019 to 81%. The project aims to extend this coverage to virtually every UK premises by 2030.
Microsoft embarks on an ambitious project, unveiling Microsoft AI London – a hub focused on advancing AI research and development. Helmed by AI scientist Jordan Hoffman, the hub will concentrate on building innovative language models and key infrastructure. Further enriching the UK’s AI ecosystem, the project aligns with Microsoft’s substantial investment strategy advancing the UK workforce towards the AI era.
In response to the unprecedented outage of the UK’s emergency calling service last summer, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) has put forward new measures aimed at bolstering the system’s reliability. These steps are in addition to enhancements already made by BT to its emergency call handling protocols, following a significant disruption that saw 9,641 callers unable to reach emergency services due to a software bug on 25 June.
In a significant development for digital infrastructure, the United Kingdom has emerged as a leader in the expansion of full fibre networks across Europe. Recent statistics have highlighted the country’s swift advancement in deploying fibre to homes, surpassing all European counterparts in the annual growth rate. Over the past year until September 2023, the UK has extended its fibre network to an additional 4.7 million households.
In a significant stride towards eradicating mobile signal blackspots, rural Wales welcomed the activation of the first among 86 planned 4G mast upgrades. This development is part of the ambitious Shared Rural Network initiative, aimed at bolstering mobile coverage in the UK’s rural and remote locales.
The United Kingdom is set to enhance its semiconductor research capabilities significantly, following the government’s decision to join forces with the European Union’s Chips Joint Undertaking (JU). This collaboration marks a pivotal step in the UK’s efforts to strengthen its position in the global semiconductor arena, promising to inject new energy into its research and innovation sectors.
Injecting fresh vigor into the national establishment for data science and AI, UK’s Chancellor commits £100 million in funding to The Alan Turing Institute. This allocation, targeting environment, health, defence, and national security, underlines UK’s ambitious stride towards global AI leadership.
