InterDigital Platform Deployed in Bristol, Barcelona; Twelve-Company Consortium Representing Six Countries Seek to Transform 5G User Experience

Company Release - 2/26/2018 2:30 AM ET

BARCELONA, Spain, Feb. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2018 -- InterDigital, Inc. (NASDAQ:IDCC), a mobile technology research and development company, today announced that the European H2020 project, FLAME, has launched its 5G testbed for urban scale trials of future open media internet services across European cities. The 5G testbed will enable the first consumer-focused, real-life trial of 5G technologies to transform user experience by faster access to media and new services.

“The FLAME project offers groundbreaking and unique technologies setting this 5G testbed apart from all that have come before it,” said Dirk Trossen, FLAME’s Technical Manager and Senior Principal Engineer at InterDigital. “We’re honored to be a part of the first real-life insights into the transformation of 5G media delivery and the enablement of new media services for smart cities. The launch of the urban-scale testbed is truly a milestone for the advancement of 5G.”

The future media internet trials will utilize the FLAME Service Delivery platform, with a Next Generation Network Flexible IP-based Services (FLIPS) platform at its heart. Developed by InterDigital, the Next Generation Network FLIPS platform is modeled after prototype efforts from two other H2020 collaborative research and development projects, POINT ("iP Over IcN - the betTer IP") and RIFE (aRchitecture for an Internet For Everybody). The FLIPS platform optimizes the delivery of service requests on top of emerging programmable infrastructures, while providing the desired quantitative and qualitative benefits (such as in terms of low latency, much higher bandwidth, lower costs, improved security) for novel 5G services.

The FLAME project initially launches in the smart cities of Bristol and Barcelona with plans to expand to cities across Europe through a EUR 2 million program of open calls. The program will allow players from the creative industries, telecommunications industries and smart cities to run 5G trials at urban-scale that improve experience for consumers, reduce the complexity of media service development and reduce the cost of delivering personalized on-demand content.

The FLAME project is led by a consortium of twelve partners including University of Southampton, InterDigital Europe, Atos Spain, i2CAT, University of Bristol, Nextworks, Martel Innovate, VRT, The Walt Disney Company, ETH Zurich, Institut Municipal d’Informatica de Barcelona, and Bristol is Open. The partners have complementary competences and demonstrated capability to provide a solid contribution to the implementation of all aspects of this research and innovation action.

Attendees of Mobile World Congress can see the platform and learn more at InterDigital’s pavilion in Hall 7, Stand 7C61 .