Case study

Urban Connected Communities

Testing 5G in cities

• From: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
• Published: 23 July 2018
• Last updated: 10 September 2018 — See all updates

The 5G Programme Team are working with West Midlands 5G Ltd, a public sector delivery organisation of the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA), to deliver this project. The project aims to:

• Test models for cost-effective deployment of 5G infrastructure in highly populated urban areas, and remove barriers.
• Explore potential for 5G to enable economic and social benefits, for example through cost savings and service improvements in the public sector.
• Develop and test new applications and services that use 5G capabilities; and commercial business models
• Inform and test West Midland and National digital policy and regulation.
• Raise awareness of 5G amongst citizens, public and private sector organisations across the region and encourage engagement through the various WM5G workstreams.

Up to £21 million of DCMS funding is currently available for the project, from October 2018 to March 2022. This will be matched by local public investment; and total public investment in the project should be matched by private investment. (subject to change with ministerial approval).

Planned projects include:

• Infrastructure Acceleration project involves working with MNOs, LAs and other stakeholders to remove the barriers to 5G and HetNet deployment.;
• 5G Applications Accelerator for organisations to develop innovative services;
• Testbeds to design, test and prove 5G use cases, for example in mobility.

West Midlands 5G (WM5G) held an ambulance demo event in June and applications demo event in September, in Birmingham, with partners including universities, telecoms sector and the NHS.

For further information, please see the WM5G website.

Published 23 July 2018
Last updated 10 September 2018 + show all updates

1. 10 September 2018

   Updated with UCC announcement details.

2. 23 July 2018

   First published.