Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 12 | Page 7

NEWS Drone industry leaders pool expertise to solve challenge of ‘out of sight flying’ L ondon’s City Hall has played host to a meeting of leading drone industry stakeholders who gathered to discuss how best to harness UK expertise to enable the delivery of ‘Beyond Visual Line of Sight’ (BVLOS) and ‘Vertical Take-Off and Landing’ (VTOL) Drone Flights and ‘Unmanned Traffic Management’ (UTM) systems for drones. The meeting signifies the UK drone industry’s commitment to provide a solution to two of the sector’s biggest challenges to make routine commercial drone flights a reality in UK skies. AM, the meeting sought to pull together the expertise developed through several different BVLOS, VTOL and UTM pilot projects being progressed by a range of UK organisations dedicated to the success of the drone industry, both in the public and private sector. Recent discussions between Drone Major Group Ltd who convened the meeting, and representatives of the Department for Transport (DfT), the Greater London Authority (GLA), British Standards Institution (BSI) and others highlighted the need for the industry to come together to agree the best approaches to ensure that the UK maintains its leading role in the drone industry’s continued development as one of the world’s most economically significant disruptor technologies. The outputs of the meeting are expected to form an important industry contribution to government thinking on the long- awaited Drone Bill, which is at an advanced stage of drafting and is now expected to be laid before Parliament in early 2019. Hosted at City Hall by London Assembly Transport Committee member, Keith Prince ///////////////// Huawei unveils 5G home broadband capability in London H uawei and Three UK have showcased a 5G home broadband demonstration using Three UK’s 100MHz C-Band spectrum at the 2018 Huawei Mobile Broadband Forum, bringing to life the transformative capability of 5G services. in densely populated urban areas and train stations, paving the way for the full commercial use of 5G networks in 2019. Yang Chaobin, President of Huawei 5G Product Line, said: “The 5G trials we carried out to demonstrate the opportunity this technology brings to the home broadband market. Huawei will continue to work with Three UK to bring customers more market-leading commercial applications of 5G.” The demonstration leverages Huawei’s latest home broadband routers – the first 5G commercial terminals in the world – to allow forum attendees to experience ultra- high-speed 5G broadband services, such as cloud gaming and 4K video streaming. The service is expected to deliver a maximum download speed of 2 Gbps, with an average of 1 Gbps for a single user. This follows the successful pre-commercial network tests that Huawei and Three conducted earlier this year. Huawei will continue to work with Three to conduct further 5G service tests in the UK, which are expected to be released to the public www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 7