Government Offers GBP1m to Help UK Businesses Harness 5G Mobile

The next (5th) generation of 5G based Mobile Broadband technology is still roughly five years away, but that hasn’t stopped the Government getting an early start and today they’ve offered another £1m to help encourage businesses to find innovative uses for the service.

Future 5G services could be able to deliver a peak download speed of 20Gbps (Gigabits per second), or 20,000Mbps if you prefer, but it’s not expected to begin a commercial deployment until around 2020. At present there are plenty of early prototype proposals for the technology, but we’re still a couple of years away from seeing any kind of firmly agreed standard(s).

However the Government, despite not knowing what a 5G network may actually look like or require, has today set aside £1 million for “innovative projects to exploit opportunities created by a new 5G infrastructure“.. whatever it may become.

UK Government Statement

This competition aims to support businesses to develop 5G applications and services that will help the UK to be an early exploiter of 5G and a leader in the field.

Funded collaborative R&D projects are expected to be across a broad range of areas but could include ones related to the Internet of Things, the tactile internet, mission-critical applications, new handset services, new mobile applications, connected media services, immersive and interactive content, and content distribution.

The “competition” opens on 7th December 2015 (deadline for registration is 20th January 2016), although it will only accept applications (worth up to £220K each over 9-12 months) from businesses that are working with academic or research institutions and/or communications providers (public sector organisations and charities involved in research can be a partner in a project).

Apparently a briefing event for potential applicants will be held in London on 10th December 2015 (details here).