With the establishment of Great British Rail as the rail sector’s ‘directing mind’ and the new Government’s ambitions to improve connectivity across the rail network, techUK is hosting a member-only roundtable to gather initial opinions on the direction of travel for improving connectivity on rail networks.

The Government’s Get Britain Moving strategy outlines its ambition to deliver a unified and simplified rail system that relentlessly focuses on securing improved services for passengers. Within this comes a vision for better mobile connectivity, including moving towards 5G; an important progression for rail considering growing customer expectations of reliable internet. Polling also indicates that greater connectivity is likely to draw more customers to the rail network.

The UK has struggled to roll-out connectivity across rail networks owing to a series of factors including stalled government backing, institutional and commercial barriers and planning. However, with major reforms to the sector underway through the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill and forthcoming Railways Bill, we have an opportunity to come up with new approaches,  breakdown adoption barriers and deliver greater cross-industry coordination. 

techUK intends to lead in the development of a set of definitive recommendations for Government and will use this roundtable to seek views from the industry on what needs to happen next. These include perspectives on the following:

  • Barriers to implementation across the key industries involved in rail connectivity
  • Technological solutions and innovations that can be deployed across the short- and long-term
  • Regulatory and policy considerations that are necessary

The roundtable will be held on Wednesday 2nd October and conducted under Chatham House rule.

In order to attend, we are asking members to respond to this email with a short rationale of why you are seeking to join this session. 

If you are unable to attend but would like to input into techUK’s response we welcome any initial written feedback to be submitted to [email protected] by the Friday 11th October. 

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Josh Turpin

Josh Turpin

Programme Manager, Telecoms and Net Zero, techUK

Lucas Banach

Lucas Banach

Programme Assistant, Data Centres, Climate, Environment and Sustainability, Market Access, techUK

 

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