Machine-to-Machine Communication

It is a pleasure and an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Scott. I believe I have the privilege of being the first Member to raise the matter of machine-to-machine communication in Parliament. Interestingly, the internet was first mentioned in the House in February 1990 by Emma Nicholson, a Conservative MP. At that time, only 3 million people worldwide had access to the internet, mainly academics and the military, three-quarters of them living in the United States. Twenty-one years later, there are an estimated 2 billion regular internet users, only 13% of whom live in the US and 44% of whom are Asian. Those figures will grow. The internet has revolutionised our world. Machine-to-machine communication is the next stage in the internet revolution. Having connected people, we shall move on to connecting machines and things.