UK5G Newsletter 

News from today: Government confirms plans to safeguard country’s telecoms network

New restrictions are to be placed on the use of high risk vendors in the UK’s 5G and gigabit-capable networks, the government has announced at the conclusion of its Telecoms Supply Chain Review.

In the last issue, Ros Singleton (Chair of the UK5G Advisory Board) mentioned that the Creative Industries Working Group are working on delivering a number of events.

Today, Alex Connock (UK5G Advisory Board Member, deputy chair of the Creative Industries committee)  will provide a quick status update along with some details of the 5G Expo Global on 17-18 March.

5G is a huge commercial opportunity for the UK – and it's been a busy January for those involved in the 5G space. The technology itself is starting to roll out as a network level, to be advertised, and to capture the imagination of both end users (the public) and business users.

Members on the UK5G advisory board will often be contacted to speak at various events and share insight gained from the 5G testbed and trials programme, as well as the general information-swapping that the board is there to help promote.

Last week I joined into a private session hosted at the NYU Abu Dhabi University in London – with students from as far afield as the Gulf, Pakistan and South Korea. We discussed, sector by sector, the UK creative industries and how 5G can empower them. We talked about the livestream capability of 5G to bring underrepresented sports on live video to the public in a way that has not hitherto been possible on cable/satellite TV with the large fixed costs of OB trucks; canoeing, showjumping, and other staples of the British Olympic Association’s efforts for Tokyo 2020 not least.

We also talked about the impact of low latency (response speed, in layman’s language) on the video games industry. And we let our imagination run riot with the possibility of having 10,000 people at Glastonbury Festival or an FA Cup Final all eventually streaming in HD their view of the stage, such that a cloud-computing system could generate a real-time three-dimensional version of the event and allow anyone at home to fly around within it, picking any vantage point. (That’s a leap into the future, and not something that the technical infrastructure in 2021 is going to support, but 1.5GB bandwidth on mobile phones does open such possibilities.)

Above all we heard the students thinking about the creativity – technical and artistic – that this explosive growth in bandwidth would empower. We talked about how – as with all previous great technical leaps on the internet – it was unlikely to be top-down solutions by existing providers that prevailed, but new players with radical inventions. Think how the internet spawned startups like google and Spotify.

Currently, I'm preparing for the 5G Expo in March which UK5G are a key partner. If you have not registered to attend, I urge you to do so because the agenda is looking strong with a good mix of verticals being explored. I'm delighted to see a strong UK5G cohort on the speaker list too (see below) many of whom will be joining me on day 1 for the '5G for Creative Industries' panel, the plan for which you can view here.

- Tony Sceales Programme Development Lead on the DCMS 5G Testbeds and Trials Programme Department
- Dimitra Simeonidou - Director, Smart Internet Lab (University of Bristol)
- Ed King, Lead Architect BBC
- Yue Wang Principal 5G Researcher Samsung UK
- Matt Stagg Director of Mobile Strategy BT Sport
- Rory Byrne Immersive Studio - Business Director, Imagination
- Dez O’Connor, Business Development Manager, CISCO 
- and of course, many more expert speakers.

Hopefully see you there!

Alex,
Fellow in Marketing at Said Business School, Oxford University and MD at Missile Digital Studios. Twitter: @dralexconnock Linkedin: Alex Connock

Featured event: DSP Leaders 

DSP Leaders returns to Windsor in May for 2 more days of high-level strategic discussion and debate, supporting telcos on their journey to become Digital Service Providers (DSPs). Benefit a great 40% Discount Early Bird if you register by 31st January. We’ll discussing Digital Services Markets, Business Models, Investment & Economic Models for DSPs, Geopolitical Impact on Telecoms and a lot more.

Upcoming events this month

4 Feb | Introduction to Private 4G & 5G Networks | London

6 Feb | The Art of 5G: Painting the possibilities | London (a Verizon event)

11-12 Feb | Move 2020 | London (30% ticket discount for UK5G members) 

24-27 Feb | MWC 2020 | Barcelona

UK5G Discounts

As subscribers and members of UK5G, you are entitled to various event discounts which are now gated on the UK5G website. Please ensure you are logged in when browsing the UK5G website to access these discounts. 

If you are delivering a webinar or event on 5G, please upload onto the UK5G website by submitting details via your UK5G dashboard or email news@uk5g.co.uk

5G ACIA Workshop: Industry 4.0 Think Tank

Last week, UK5G supported the 5G-ACIA Plenary and Workshop in Coventry - a well attended 3-day event which brought together 5G led manufacturing automation expertise. The day 3 workshop successfully showed case 5G capabilities in the UK, lessons learned from the 5G testbed and trials, as well as good discussions with our partners in 5G-ACIA on how to lift industrial 5G to the next level. 

Our write-up of the event will be made available in the coming weeks.

Featured Resource from Ericsson

Have you seen the latest UK5G Magazine?

Issue 2 of the UK5G Special was published earlier this month and it is jam packed with 5G  insights from Government, Industry and the Testbeds. 

View the digital version on Flickread here.