London’s Super Connected City Plan

London’s Super Connected City Plan is ambitious and innovative. It will underpin the capital’s aspiration for contiguous ultrafast connectivity, provide the digital infrastructure needed for the new economy and help East London realise its full economic potential.

Successful delivery of this plan will be critical to realising the Mayor of London’s prime objective: economic growth for London, and job creation for Londoners.

London is unlike any other city in the UK, especially in light of its size and position in the global economy. London is a global city and one of only two ‘alpha ++’ cities, according to the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. To compete internationally, attract high-tech investment and support indigenous growth among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), London must offer businesses (large and small) world-class digital infrastructure. International benchmarks reveal the capital underperforms on measures of digital connectivity, and yet excels on all other measures of business competitiveness. The SCCP will help to address this deficit where the market has failed to deliver.

The maximum Urban Broadband Fund (UBF) allocation for London (GBP25 million) is small when compared with other cities on a per-capita basis. This plan therefore focuses investment where the economic impact will be greatest, where the creation and expansion of bandwidth-hungry SMEs will occur. However, we have not overlooked consumers, particularly where SMEs and residences co-exist, where the boundary between work and home blurs (in Tech City), or where digital inclusion is a priority.

The Secretary of State and the Mayor of London have agreed in principle to focus London’s SCCP on the below four pillars.

Pillar 1: Tech City fibre: this pillar will ensure the provision of affordable ultrafast fibre broadband connectivity to 100% of SMEs and residents in Tech City, i.e. around ‘Silicon Roundabout’ in Shoreditch expanding east towards the Olympic Park then south via Canning Town to Victoria Docks.

Pillar 2: East London wireless: this pillar will complement existing wireless provision in ‘high footfall’ areas across West and Central London by extending wireless connectivity east along the Docklands Light Railway. Wireless connectivity will be provided to business and leisure passengers travelling from east to west (London City Airport to Tower Gateway) and from north to south (Stratford to Canary Wharf).

Pillar 3: Royal Docks gigabit: this pillar will ensure the provision of affordable gigabit fibre broadband and gigabit connectivity to businesses and institutions in the Royal Docks, focussed on the ‘Arc of Opportunity’ in the London Borough of Newham.

Pillar 4: Digital inclusion: this pillar will develop a model to enable digitally excluded Londoners living in high-density social housing estates to gain access to ultrafast fibre broadband and online services. Initially, this will take place across the most deprived areas in the City of Westminster and builds upon a project by Westminster City Council – which is in an advanced planning stage and can therefore be delivered within the SCCP delivery timeframe (to March 2015).

Commercially sensitive information has been redacted from this publication.