Telenor to Coordinate EU 5G PPP Project

The EU on Wednesday selected Telenor to coordinate one of its pan-European initiatives aimed at accelerating 5G uptake.

The snappily-titled 5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure (5G-VINNI) comprises 23 partners, from major operators, vendors and academic institutions. It will provide an end-to-end facility that validates the performance of new 5G technologies, and explore new solutions for various verticals, such as public safety, eHealth, shipping, transportation, media and entertainment, and automotive.

5G-VINNI is one of three R&D projects that together form Phase 3 of the EU’s 5G public private partnership (PPP). The other two, 5G EVE and 5GENESIS, will explore the foundations for end-to-end 5G network rollout, and validation of 5G network KPIs respectively. They were announced at the European Commission’s EuCNC conference in Ljubljana in June.

“We are proud to be given the opportunity to coordinate the 5G-VINNI project and to explore valuable future solutions for the vertical industries. Being one of three large-scale test platforms for Europe, 5G-VINNI will help propel the development of 5G,” said Patrick Waldemar, vice president of Telenor Research, who will manage the project for the Norwegian incumbent.

Telenor said 5G-VINNI will be run out of four main sites located in Norway, the UK, Spain, and Greece. Further experimental sites will be established in Germany and Portugal. The project will run for three years and has a €20 million budget.

Telenor has already chosen two sites for the Norway facility: one in Kongsberg, which is Telenor’s 5G pilot city, and a location in greater Oslo. Nokia will provide end-to-end orchestration and its virtualisation platform, Ericsson and Huawei will supply 5G radios and core, and Cisco will deliver a distributed IoT data fabric service, Telenor said.

“Our aim is to make it as easy as possible to utilise and test the platform and we now call on industry players in Europe to engage with the project,” Waldemar said. – Total Telecom