Real Wireless continues its journey through the Research and Innovation ecosystem of Horizon 2020 projects with our participation in 5G-TOURS. As a UK based SME but with a global client base and with a number of staff from European countries, and further afield, we are always delighted to be part of these multi-national collaborative projects. 5G-TOURS with its 28 partners is a substantial and thought leading 5G project that explores the potential of use cases in three high potential economic sectors (Transport, Health, and Tourism) for Europe. All in the economic context of European Cities.
Real Wireless is part of the leadership team of the project; co-ordinating the business case, innovation and dissemination task areas. We bring our market leading techno-economic expertise into the project; building on the know-how gained during our previous Horizon 2020 project participation in 5G-NORMA and 5G-MoNArch. We lead the benefit analysis for use cases based on vertical users and end users perspectives taking into account the theme of “Enabling the Verticals” which focusses the value propositions of the use cases. In a new development for our collaborative research projects we also bring our business analyst research expertise to the fore as we discover new business models as well as refining some familiar infrastructure investment themes. Our approach to business model and business case analysis will be critical to the business validation approach of 5G-TOURS.
We continually innovate in our approach to “Bridging the Gap”. Our experience has informed us that the aspirations of the Smart City leadership can be challenged by many factors. Getting the best fit for the approach to the ecosystem of networks is critical to success for users of services that are carried over the networks, and the businesses or public sector players that provision such networks. Both outdoor and indoor use cases are present in the project which allows for the exploration of different deployment models; neutral host, private networks and sliced public networks. We’ll explore how costs and potential revenue models can bring economic viability to the use cases.
The inclusion of Broadcast infrastructure and brings an interesting twist to the city networks narrative in 5G-TOURS. Having looked at broadcast network and spectrum issues for clients in the past we are delighted to see the potential for this infrastructure being evaluated. As ever with such large collaborative projects we anticipate our close working with the Innovation Managers of the project may well lead to the discovery of new use cases, technical approaches and potential for value creation will be discovered.
In the first phases of the project Real Wireless carried out extensive research into emergent 5G business models and has researched the multitude of City Indexes that have been published over the years and that frame the strategic thinking of Smart City leaders. The factors that are considered in City Indexes may not always fit so well with the emergence of 5G, we can see how the Indexes could be enhanced. Our Economics analysis helps guide the project partners on the value propositions of the use cases that are under development. With our practical experience of deployment of networks we take a keen interest in the verification and validation of the claims that are made by suppliers of technology – we like to see solid approaches to validation of network and user experiences. Through the monitoring of critical KPIs and working in the teams specifying tests and result processing we are close to the verification and validation processes of 5G-TOURS. This will give us a deep understanding of the anticipated experience of the B2C and B2B users of the use cases as they are delivered and trialled in the 5G-TOURS testbeds and ultimately prepared for commercial launch as project partners bring innovations to market.