Advanced Television

Comux to be based in Birmingham

May 13, 2013

Comux UK, the community not-for-profit business selected by Ofcom to build and operate the local TV broadcasting platform, will be located at Birmingham Science Park Aston’s Innovation Birmingham Campus.

Comux will occupy three suites within the ground floor of the Faraday Wharf building. One suite will be dedicated to broadcast operations, one will house the servers required to power the local TV stations that will be operational across the UK, with the third suite being occupied by the operations team.

The Ofcom licence has been awarded to Comux for 12 years, which coincides with the lease term taken out on the space at the Innovation Birmingham Campus.  Comux selected the location because of the provision of 2Gbit/s broadband connectivity. It is working with the specialist Science Park provider of this infrastructure ­– WarwickNet – to install the broadcast capability to each local TV station across the UK that has been awarded an OfCom licence. There will be 19 stations in the first phase, which are due to be live by end of 2013.

Comux UK Founder Ed Hall said: “Ofcom’s local TV initiative is one of the most exciting changes to the UK’s TV landscape for many years. Previously local TV has been limited to a handful of cities, but soon there will be up to 60 towns and cities with their own dedicated channel, serving the local community. Basing the Comux operation at the Innovation Birmingham Campus makes absolute business sense. For one, it is an urban location in the centre of the country with very good accessibility, but crucially it is one of the only places that is capable of providing the infrastructure we need to power a UK wide network of local TV stations. The Innovation Birmingham team has bent over backwards to fulfil our unique requirements and we can’t wait to move in and set everything in place to enable the first 19 channels to commence broadcasting.”

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