Innovate UK - Net Zero in Telecommunications Sandpit event

Innovate UK would like to invite you to participate in a Sandpit event with the theme of Net Zero in the Telecommunications industry.

This will be a one-day event designed to bring innovative thought leaders together, to address the challenges of sustainability in the Telecoms industry and during that day to develop ideas for potential solutions.

These ideas will have potential for further funding and development

So what is the Challenge?

How do we Innovate the Telecommunications industry to ensure it can grow and develop in a sustainable way?

The Telecommunication industry is broad and encompasses a wide spectrum of technology. It continues to grow in such a way that it encompasses almost of our daily activities: whether communicating with friends, family or colleagues, monitoring movement of goods, people of vehicles, the state of our natural environment or beaming information into our homes and places of work. The volume and means of transmitting information will continue to grow exponentially.

This does and will continue to have an impact on our environment. The challenge for us all is how do we make this sustainable in both the short and longer term?

The purpose of this Sandpit event is to address these challenges, to come together and generate ideas for how we might achieve this.

Suggestions could include (but are not limited to):

- Energy - The powering of the infrastructure and communication devices

- Technology - The rationalisation of the way we communicate and obtain infotainment

- Collaboration - The ways that telecoms can help other industries to achieve NetZero

- Sustainability - Reducing waste, recycling, improving operation of telecom systems

- Data - The packaging, compression, and minimisation of data size

- Open category.

Format of the day:

The day will be split into two halves:

• Morning: To outline and define the challenge faced in the industry in developing Net Zero solutions

• Afternoon: To develop individual pitches, culminating in a series of feasibility pitches from the attendees to be judged by a selected panel.

The selection panel will be made up of individuals from Innovate UK, DCMS as well as RTC North.

The winning pitch will be awarded £6000 to further develop a feasibility study around the winning proposal with two further runners up awards of £4000 and £3000 respectively.