UK govt puts £16 million into university 5G Hub partnership

• 5G Hub partnership to link three leading universities
• Will undertake testing and trialing 5G in the UK from next year
• The result will be a 5G ‘national asset’

The UK government is to make a £16m investment in a new 5G Hub partnership which will link three leading UK universities’ test beds.  The idea is to develop the first trials of end-to-end 5G by linking up the universities and their respective 5G specialities with a high performance network.

Bristol University is to  deploy Smart City 5G capabilities, taking advantage of its extensive Smart City and Smart Campus test beds. Bristol as a city has made a name for itself in ‘smart city’ trials and research and the university is to showcase full 5G and fibre infrastructure convergence. It will also contribute to the key Software Defined Network technologies for end-to-end 5G service delivery. Public demonstrators will be the focus of delivery - targeting media, gaming and transport applications.

Read: Bristol is Open: preparing the ground for the ‘Programmable City’

King’s College London is working  on ultra-low latency 5G tactile internet developments with ‘Internet of Skills’ applications. Through the King’s College London 5G Tactile Internet Lab, the university is also pioneering several important 5G co-design approaches with various industries, including smart cities, smart transport, performing arts and health.

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The University of Surrey’s 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC) will lead the project and develop 5G radio technologies and a fully virtualised mobile core network at 3.5GHz and 700 MHz frequency bands for enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) and Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC).

Watch TelecomTV’s video interview University of Surrey delivers the first virtualized 5G architecture

The 5G Hub will use a federated model of working between the three Universities but will be ready for expansion to include other organisations from 2018 onwards. In its first year the intention is to create an end-to-end test bed, distributed across the three University sites; to demonstrate end-to-end system performance at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona in 2018, with the main aim being to be ready for nationwide connectivity and testing and trials next year.