Chairman's Report No 5

NGNuk Executive Chairman's Report NO 5 for September 2006.

Today we have published the minutes from the NGNuk Executive meeting of the 28th of September. Applications for membership are continuing to come in. Carphone Warehouse and T-Mobile UK have joined the Executive, Global Crossing and Three have joined as Participating members. The Work-Stream activity is now gaining momentum. A Programme Board has been created and met three times to ensure co-ordination and clarity of activities within Members organisations as well as across the Work-Streams and related activities.

Highlights during the month were:

  1. Programme Board up and running
  2. Priority Commercial Group formed to focus on issues that could affect investment and/or network plans in advance of the January 2008 target we have set for the availability of and agreement to the overall framework
  3. Meetings took place with ITSPA and FCS (who have subsequently joined as an Associate Member)
  4. Liaison with NICC has been strengthened; the NGNuk Secretariat briefed a recent NICC Board meeting. It was agreed to have mutual standing agenda items on the NICC Board and the NGNuk Executive. We continue to work closely on the Green Release and Clive Fedida (NGNuk Technical Director) will attend the TSG
  5. Liaison with Consult 21 has also been strengthened through NGNuk Secretariat Directors attending the Steering Board and Huw Saunders (Kingston) being on both the Consult21 Board and the NGNuk Exec.
  6. Workgroups have their draft Terms of Reference. Nominations have been invited and work is already underway to define and agree the scope of Services to be covered by the NGNuk Work Programme. The first stage of requirements definition is underway.
  7. We have a new Website coming on stream during the month that will have a dedicated member's area with access to WIP Documents and Minutes etc.
  8. We have started planning for a plenary session open to all members towards the end of the year.

I am pleased with progress so far. The membership is growing. Activity is ramping up on the Workstreams. The formation of the priority Commercial Group is also critical to driving activity forward. As always, of course, success will depend on continuing and more intensive Industry Engagement which I am glad to say is starting to happen.