Newsflash October 2020

Strategic Deployment Agenda for Connected and Automated Mobility

The Commission brought together key stakeholders last week at the European 5G Observatory stakeholder event where Telecom and transport industry experts announced the formal release of the 5G Strategic Deployment Agenda for Connected and Automated Mobility (Click to open document). The 5G Strategic Deployment Agenda presents a common vision for investing in 5G-ecosystems in the field of Connected and Automated Mobility and identifies the key drivers for accelerating infrastructure roll-out. It will serve as a basis for the upcoming privately as well as publicly supported deployment projects in this field with a particular focus on the upcoming Connecting Europe Facility 2 Digital programme.

This agenda is the result of stakeholder engagement under the joint initiative between the European Commission and European ICT industry (the 5G Public-Private Partnership, or the 5G-PPP). It builds upon the initial draft version of the agenda that had been issued in October 2019. The stakeholders involved in this cooperation include representatives from the relevant European industry associations who provide their formal support in the document, as well as the experts of the three 5G corridor trial projects under Horizon 2020.

The Strategic Deployment Agenda can also be downloaded from the 5G-PPP white papers page:  https://5g-ppp.eu/white-papers/

5G Action Plan and Corridors

The latest findings under the 5G observatory show overall good progress towards the 5G Action Plan targets with the commercial launch of 5G services in more than half of EU countries and further launches expected by the end of 2020. The massive private investments of €1 billion leveraged in 5G trials will be an important enabler for building up 5G ecosystems in Europe’s industrial sectors. However, spectrum assignment is still below 30% and has been delayed in some countries due to the COVID-19 crisis. The stakeholder event identified a number of concrete areas where further actions can contribute to a swift 5G roll-out and adoption in the EU. These range from better coordination in the area of spectrum to easing deployment of 5G infrastructure, as well as raising awareness in industry and the wider society regarding the benefits of 5G.

Europe’s 5G Action Plan sets ambitious objectives for pan-European deployment of 5G connectivity infrastructure along major transport paths by 2025. These “5G corridors” are expected to be a key enabler for connected and automated mobility and for the development of innovative ecosystems around cars and other means of transport.

Three additional 5G corridor trial projects were launched in September 2020. Altogether, they will contribute to the validation of 5G technology solutions for use cases in the field of Connected and Automated Mobility. They will also bring insights on service requirements and network deployment planning in view of the Connecting Europe Facility 2 Digital programme (CEF2 Digital). CEF Digital will provide financial support to the deployment of 5G corridors, with a focus on cross-border sections and other economically challenging areas (see map below).

Next steps

Subsequent versions of the 5G Strategic Deployment Agenda will be coordinated under the European Partnership on Smart and Network Services, which is planned to be launched by the first half of 2021. In addition to the new research programme towards 6G, the partnership will provide strategic guidance for the implementation of CEF Digital and other deployment programmes.

Further planned milestones in relation to the Strategic Deployment Agenda include the identification of potential cooperation models enabling the deployment and use of 5G infrastructures for Connected and Automated Mobility, as well as corridor-specific feasibility studies as part of the exploitation activities under the ongoing 5G corridor trial projects.

5G PPP White Paper: 5G Trials for Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility along European Cross-Border Corridors

Read the full document here.

5G Trials in Europe – 5G Experimentation Facilities and Vertical Trials Webinar

Webinar outline:

The intense research work on 5G realisation has reached the point where the 5G capabilities are ready to be exploited by third party innovators, also referred to as vertical industries. In this context, the new ecosystem that emerges on service provisioning over 5G and beyond networks has two major stakeholders. On the one hand, the verticals that are ready to take advantage of the performance gains and the configuration flexibility that 5G brings; and, one the other hand, the operators (or  infrastructure owners) that eventually have a rich toolbox based on the virtualisation and the network slicing features, which enables new business opportunities.

The workshop attracted almost 100 participants. It was organised by the Institute of Informatics & Telecommunications of the Greek National Centre of Scientific Research “Demokritos” in the framework of 5G PPP infrastructure project 5GENESIS, which they are coordinating, and 5G PPP vertical use case project 5G!Drones.

The main goal of the workshop was to present the recent developments of the 5G experimentation facilities of the three 5G PPP infrastructure projects and the vertical trials by the 5G PPP use case projects. To complete the 5G picture, the workshop also featured presentations by projects under the Horizon 2020 topics ‘Secure Societies’ and ‘5G Long Term Evolution’, showing 5G trials related to first responder teams and discussing future perspectives of 5G.

Presentation of INSPIRE-5Gplus:

Uwe Herzog’s presentation was part of the ‘5G Long Term Evolution’ session, which was moderated by Anastasios Kourtis from NCSR Demokritos. In his talk on “Intelligent Security and Pervasive Trust for 5G and Beyond”, which was prepared with the help of Chafika Benzaid from Aalto University, he presented the INSPIRE-5Gplus vision for 5G and beyond security and then explained the technical objectives and activities of INSPIRE-5Gplus for realising this vision.

Presentation of 5G EVE:

5G EVE coordinator Mauro Boldi from TIM presented the 5G EVE project at an online workshop on “5G Experimentation Facilities and Vertical Trials: Current Status and Future Perspectives”. Mauro Boldi’s presentation was part of the “5G Experimentation Platforms” session, which was moderated by Prof. Pedro Merino from the University of Malaga. In his talk on the “5G European Validation platform for Extensive trials”, he presented the vision, architecture and roadmap of 5G EVE’s end-to-end validation platform as well as the site facilities in France, Greece, and Spain.

A synthesized list of participants and the videos of the different sessions are available below:

5G-IA/5G PPP Session – Introductory Session –   VIDEO 1  –   Moderator:    Harilaos Koumaras, NCSR Demokritos

• 5G PPP Programmatic Perspectives
• 5G PPP – The Beginning of the End and what comes next
• 5G PPP Technology Board: Current Status and future activities

5G Experimentation Platforms (5G-PPP ICT-17 Projects) – VIDEO 2    –   Moderator:    Prof. Pedro Merino, University of Malaga

• 5GENESIS
• 5G-VINNI
• 5G-EVE

G Vertical Experimentation (5G-PPP ICT-19 Projects) –  VIDEO 3    –  Moderator:    David Kennedy, EURESCOM  

• 5G-VICTORI
• 5G-HEART
• 5G-SOLUTIONS
• 5G!Drones
• 5G-GROWTH
• 5G-TOURS
• 5G SMART
• FULL5G

5G Long Term Evolution –  VIDEO 4 –    Moderator:     Dr. Anastasios Kourtis, NCSR Demokritos

• INSPIRE-5Gplus
• ARIADNE

5G In Security –   VIDEO 5     –  Moderator:     Dr. Dimitris Tsolkas, FOGUS Innovations

• RESPOND-A
• SPIDER

Go and check the full agenda here.

5G EVE Call for Experimentation

The submission deadline for proposals is 31st December 2020.

Further information and the online application form are available on the Call Page

5G-HEART webinar series Webinar #1 – Healthcare vertical trials

IoRL online Workshop @IEEE BSMB 2020

The Internet of Radio-Light (IoRL) project develops a safer, more secure, customizable and intelligent building network that reliably delivers increased throughput (greater than 10Gbps) from access points pervasively located within buildings, whilst minimizing interference and electromagnetic field exposure and providing location accuracy of less than 10 cm. It thereby shows how to solve the problem of broadband wireless access in buildings and promotes the establishment of a global standard in ITU. This workshop presents the system architecture and its sub-systems, innovative virtual network functions and user applications and the system key performance results.

5GZORRO Tech Talk on Telco, DLT and Blockchains

 Telco Business innovation trough Distributed Ledgers Technologies

With the advent of virtualisation and “softwarisazion” in 5G, Telecom Operators and Content Service Providers can catch new business opportunities through new Vertical use cases (e.g. in Industry 4.0, Media, Automotive, Energy, etc.). As new stakeholders are starting to join the 5G ecosystem and a solid trend exists towards the automatic configuration of virtualised private cellular networks for mission-critical applications of the Verticals, it is becoming crucial to efficiently deal with all multilateral agreements among infrastructure providers, network operators, service providers, virtual function developers, spectrum owners and regulators in a secure, automated and trusted way.

The first 5GZORRO Tech Talk took place on 20 October 2020. The event aimed to stimulate a focus discussion with experts in the field on the role Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) / Blockchains are having in the 5G Telco business.

Many standards developing organizations, associations and Telcos are looking today at DLTs as basic enablers for multi-stakeholder 5G network infrastructure and services across various actors of the value chain, capable to contribute to the automation, security and traceability of settlements when building cost-effective deployment of intelligent 5G networks in multi-stakeholder environments.

Standards, as well as, technical solutions are in great demand by Telecom Operators, Spectrum Regulators, Vertical Users, Content Service Providers and Facility Owners who need to implement truly secure and coordinated business operations for their flexible 5G network and services deployed across multiple domains and operators.

Key speakers from IBM, IOTA, CBAN, R3 CORDA, MCA, BARTR and 5GZORRO discussed the major technological and standardization challenges in the space, and how standards and research are moving (e.g. like in 5GZORRO project).

The full video of the Tech Talk on Telco, DLT and Blockchains is available on YouTube!

5G PPP projects impact on Standards Development Organisations (SDOs) – Technical Report

Read the full document here.

5G-SMART webinar on 5G Process Monitoring in Manufacturing

The “5G-SMART webinar on 5G Process Monitoring in Manufacturing” was held on October 13, organized by Fraunhofer IPT, Marposs and Ericsson.

The seminar is the first out of 3 webinars on the trials of the 5G-SMART project (www.5gsmart.eu). In this seminar, the focus was on 5G Process Monitoring in Manufacturing. Two live demos were shown, realized in the 5G-Industry Campus Europe in Aachen, Germany, a multiple shopfloor indoor and outdoor 5G research infrastructure built up to illustrate the innovation opportunities offered by various 5G use cases.

The vision of the 5G-SMART project is to empower Europe’s manufacturing sector with 5G solutions by integrating 5G in the manufacturing ecosystem, resulting in an accelerated digital transformation. This is done within the project by demonstrating and validating 5G in real-world factory setups, exploring the roles of mobile network operators and new business models as well as developing new 5G features targeting the manufacturing sector.

5G-SMART Driving innovation in Healthcare with 5G and Smart Networks

Senior medical professionals and experts from the telecommunications industry came together in a constructive dialogue to discuss on-going trials and pilots in healthcare using 5G technologies.

Taking stock of the benefits and expected impacts from early pilots, the panellists engaged in a discussion on future priorities with a view to fostering further public and private investments in the sector, defining future research and innovation focus, with end-user validation high on the agenda.

Further information on NetWorld2020 website.

Progress on the Smart Networks and Services (SNS) Partnership under Horizon Europe

The next step is for the EU Council to finalize and adopt the Basic Act that will be the regulatory basis of Horizon Europe Partnerships. The 5GIA will then review the final version of the Basic Act and evaluate the implementation conditions before submitting to the EC a final confirmation letter. In the meantime, the 5G IA, in collaboration with the wider community and stakeholders, continues the required preparatory work in order to provide the best possible contribution to Europe’s ICT sector.

Electronic 5G IA General Assembly meeting

The first part was dedicated to legal and administrative issues, including an extension of the mandate of the Board Members and the approval of the annual accounts and budget.

The second part featured presentations on the status and next steps of the Smart Networks and Services partnership under Horizon Europe by Dr. Colin Willcock, Chairman of the Board, and on key activities carried out during the last year and on the upcoming ones by Dr. Alexandros Kaloxylos, Executive Director.

Finally, guest speaker Prof. Dr.-Ing. Gerhard P. Fettweis, Vodafone Chair Professor – TU Dresden, gave an impressive presentation on “6G – Consumer Robotics & Tactile Internet!” which was much appreciated by participants.