Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

But Dr David Cleevely, chairman of the Cambridge Wireless interest group, says that member companies can broaden capacity in London’s communications networks before millions of visitors hit the streets with mobile phones and the world’s media start beaming footage back to their homelands.

Media attention has focused on Olympic infrastructure from the standpoint of bricks and mortar and transport, but according to Dr Cleevely, it is equally vital to address the data deluge that will be generated by the Games.

He said: “There is no question that the Olympics are going to be extremely communications intensive. What has been less clear up to now is how these bandwidth issues are going to be addressed.

“Cambridge has a whole raft of companies that have worked on and solved these kind of problems.

“This opportunity is worth hundreds of millions of pounds and I believe that Cambridge companies alone could walk away with tens of millions of pounds worth of business.”

To ensure local companies maximise the opportunity, Cambridge Wireless has organised a brainstorming symposium at Newmarket Racecourse in June.

This will give companies “an idea of what’s out there,” according to Dr Cleevely.

So why is there a problem? As the mobile phone has advanced technologically, so has the demand put upon the supporting networks.

As more people use video calling, multimedia messaging and media downloads, so the competition for bandwidth increases.

Cambridge, however, is home to an entire cluster of wireless firms more than capable of finding solutions, says Dr Cleevely.

He cites Cambridge Broadband, which offers a high-efficiency multipoint radio network, capable of covering multi-angled coverage of events and relaying them back to a single point – such as the many cameras filming a sports event all sending signals back to a central processing unit.

Harston-based Zinwave is also a contender for striking Olympic gold.

It is developing a novel way of piping radio spectrum over optical fibre, filling in so-called coverage ‘blackspots’ created by the structural attributes of modern buildings.

Dr Cleevely also believes that Antenova has a role to play.

It is able to produce antennae cheaply enough to supply the large scale that will be required to fulfil London’s transient need for bandwidth.

Other likely beneficiaries could include Ubisense, whose UWB tracking tech-nology could play a vital role in the construction of the various stadia, IPX, Bango, 3Way Networks, ip.access, CSR, and Qualcomm, says Dr Cleevely.