Horsham, United Kingdom, 09 February 2022: Metricell are pleased to have been selected for the Digital Connectivity Infrastructure Accelerator (DCIA) project, a government initiative which allowed local authorities to bid for funding to develop and implement digital asset management solutions, with the goal to open up public assets for rollout of advanced wireless networks. Metricell have been selected by West Sussex County Council to work as the software provider for their OpenAsset Loc8tor project.

West Sussex County Council have been chosen as one of eight pilots nationwide to develop and trial the new digital asset management platform, which aims to assist local authorities and the mobile telecommunications market in working alongside one another, in order to make public sector assets more readily available. The project go-ahead and £498k funding has been provided by the DCMS (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport), and the project will run from February 2022 to March 2023.

The OpenAsset Loc8tor is a project led by West Sussex County Council in partnership with neutral host Freshwave, leading software provider Metricell, together with Adur and Worthing Councils, Arun District Council, Chichester District Council, Crawley Borough Council, Horsham District Council and Mid-Sussex District Council.

“We are delighted to be involved with the new digital asset management platform pilot,” said Tom Staniland, Metricell’s Managing Director. “Working alongside West Sussex County Council on this digital innovation is not only exciting, but really important to us and our core ethos of being better connected within our local communities.”

The much-anticipated platform will collate, index and visualise all available public sector asset data, market them to Mobile Network Operators and, ultimately automate the site acquisition process, therefore helping to accelerate commercial investment and help improve coverage in poorly served areas.