Norfolk County Council is leading the way in digital innovation, tackling connectivity challenges in rural areas with creative solutions. By using bin lorries to map real mobile signal coverage, the council is ensuring better data-driven decision-making for residents, businesses, and service providers. Kurt Frary, head of IT & chief technology officer, shares how this pioneering approach is setting a national benchmark for smarter public services
Embracing change, leading the way
At a time where technology is rapidly changing, offering the potential to transform services, speed up service delivery and enhance people interactions. Norfolk County Council stands proudly at the forefront or innovation, embracing technology, innovating and trying new approaches to address key issues like pioneering the use of a fleet of bin lorries to improve connectivity, yes bin lorries! Connectivity is key Living, working and delivering services in a large rural county like Norfolk has its connectivity challenges both in terms of delivery of broadband services and mobile network.
Whilst we have worked hard to improve broadband coverage and speeds in the region from 42 per cent to over 90 per cent today, mobile connectivity has been a little more challenging so warrants a different approach.
The foundation of modern tech is connectivity, as without it we don’t have access to Digital, Data and Technology or systems & services, information and things like Artificial Intelligence.
If we are to deliver good quality services across the county, we need to ensure a good reliable performing mobile connection everywhere which sadly is not always the case. We need good quality data not only showing if a connection exists, but if you can make a call, if you can access the internet or online systems, the performance and the best mobile network operators.
And this is where bin lorries come in…
Mobile signal mapping Norfolk’s latest innovation initiative uses bin lorries to map mobile signals and performance of all four mobile network operators.
Current mobile coverage claims have been tested and found to be inaccurate, possibly due to being created by predictive desktop-based surveys where the real coverage and performance is very different.
We have collaborated very closely with our district council colleagues in the region, as they also need good mobile connectivity and have a fleet of refuse lorries that visit each & every residence and business throughout their districts and the county.
In addition, after initial discussions with the refuse lorry operators, they also expressed a need for enhanced mobile signals in the region, so we pushed on an open door to enable the use of their refuse trucks to collect mobile network data from every household and business.
Norfolk County Council, working with Streetwave, installed a mobile phone pack on each refuse lorry to collect the mobile information as it travelled the county. The data, once collected, is presented on a dashboard showing comprehensive mobile coverage, connectivity, data, and performance across the county. Benefits There a quite a few benefits from this initiative.
We now have a map of Norfolk showing us where we have good mobile signal and where we do not which enables us to plan services and service delivery.
We have made the Dashboard available to residents so they can enter a postcode and see what the real connectivity is like in areas they are interested in before moving home.
Businesses can use the service to see if they can take payments over the mobile network in a region or if they can deliver a new service in an area.
This data has enabled us to have data-based discussions with Ofcom and the mobile network operators about addressing shortfalls in our region.
Conclusion
Exploring, innovating, and using new technologies ensures that we can continue to deliver high-quality services in our region. It also makes it a great place to live and do business, setting a benchmark for the rest of the country.
That said, we are a team in the public sector, sharing our work and findings with other public sector organizations through groups such as Socitm and the LGA.
