Milton Keynes to house UK's first IoT network

The initiative, which also involves Milton Keynes Council and The Open University, will see a large number of static and mobile sensors deployed across the city. While the majority of these will be used to support the Council, the aim is to attract other innovators to use the infrastructure as a test bed for commercial applications, as well as new products and services. The technology is being supplied and managed by BT and Neul over a period of 18 months. Working with the Council, the two companies will install a network of Weightless base stations to provide coverage across the city for low power, connected sensors. Alan Ward, head of corporate ICT practice at BT, said: "We see this exciting project as a means of establishing an open innovation environment to support the creation of M2M and IoT applications across a whole city. This could include anything from intelligent monitoring of parking spaces in the city to networked bins which signal when they need collecting. "The project will showcase BT's capability in managing network services for these applications which will be pivotal in making this initiative a success."