A new network of communities linked by super-fast broadband is to go on trial in the UK next year, it was announced today.

Speaking to The Times at the Innovate 09 technology showcase in North London, Nick Appleyard, Lead Technologist at the government-funded Technology Strategy Board, said: “The guts of the thing has to be built through an IT procurement, which we are about to tender any week now.

“Then we need to give the eventual contractor some months to build the IT core. Our target go live date is middle of 2010.”

The Technology Strategy Board, charged with the implementation of part of the UK government’s Digital Britain strategy, is proposing to trial a superfast broadband network that would offer services not available on the wider internet. It is currently working to identify up to three areas of the country where the trial might take place.

“We’re looking for a ready-made community with certain things already in place and what we can do is upgrade it with five years worth of internet development,” Mr Appleyard said.

“The intention is not that this should reach the scale that it becomes a significant presence in the market place. It needs to be big enough to get statistically useful information out of it, and we think that scale is a few thousand people, a small community.

“My expectation is that we will end up with two or three discrete locations around the country which have particularly interesting infrastructure propositions.”

The trial is not a bid to replace the existing freedom of the internet with a government-sanctioned set of services, Mr Appleyard stressed, but a genuine attempt to see what services might work best, and how companies might profit, particularly those companies whose bottom lines have been hit by internet-based piracy or free business models.

“The hope is that by showing people that the infrastructure can be used for something profitable and by showing people who want to offer services that if they had that infrastructure their business models would be successful, you could boot-strap the two off each other,” Mr Appleyard said. “You build both their confidence, so they’re both more likely to invest.

“Nothing will be compulsory,” he said. “This is all opt-in with the option to opt out again. We need to construct a value proposition to ensure that everyone who comes in as a partner in this – and that includes individuals – sees a sufficiently attractive proposition from each of their points of view. The user will get access to a whole load of sexy new stuff that’s five years ahead of the game that they just can’t get anywhere else, while service providers will be able to do experiments with the things and see what works and what doesn’t.”

Although superfast broadband will form the backbone of these “virtual villages”, the services offered will be far more varied than those currently available online to the rest of the population.

Mr Appleyard said: “We are not talking here just about delivering services to a computer but about new ways to deliver TV, direct connection to electricity meters, connection to controls for light switches. There are also tremendous healthcare and educational possibilities, and all kinds of stuff in the public service domain.”

Elsewhere at the Innovate 09 exhibition Lord Mandelson, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, announced a industry competition for £39.5 million of government funding for R&D projects in such fields as transport and logistics, regenerative medicine, agriculture and low-carbon housing.

“Driving innovation in these areas where the UK has strength and competitive advantage will speed our recovery and help deliver a strong economy coming out of the global downturn,” Lord Mandelson said.

The Technology Strategy Board was established in 2007 by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to invest in technology-based innovation. Over the three years from 2008 to 2011 the board will channel more than £1 billion of public funding into technological innovation in the UK, a sum that will be matched by private-sector funding.

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