A co-innovation project to create rural test-beds and trials for 5G wireless and mobile connectivity across the Orkney Islands, Shropshire, and Somerset.
The internationally broadcasted film, highlights how 5G technology holds the potential to bridge the connectivity gap between urban and rural areas to reinvigorate businesses and industries that are the key drivers in rural economies.
5G holds particular promise for boosting download speeds, lowering latency, and laying the foundations for improving connectivity for billions of devices. 5G RuralFirst was funded by the UK Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) as part of their wider 5G Testbed & Trial programme and UK-wide 5G strategy.
The ambitious £7.6 million project was intended to create complete end-to-end rural 5G systems to enable innovative network technologies, spectrum sharing, applications, and new business models.
The key focus of the 5G RuralFirst project was to test and demonstrate innovative approaches to ensure 5G connectivity is accessible and affordable in remote rural areas across the UK. The project also addressed the needs and aspirations of communities and businesses throughout rural areas in ways that 4G, 3G, and 2G had not previously been able to do.
At its South West Dairy Development Centre in Somerset, one of the project’s testbeds, Agri-EPI Centre used a 5G enabled drone, equipped with multispectral imaging, to analyse grass across the farm’s 42 hectares of grazing fields. The 5G RuralFirst project helped to deliver an alternative to the more conventional means of measuring the quantity of grass available in the grazing area and the potential to measure grass feed quality as well.
Rural areas notoriously suffer from weak, or even no, mobile signal and broadband connectivity, which makes download speeds and data collection much slower. An unreliable connection and the cost of technology to boost signals has a profoundly negative impact on rural businesses and industries.
5G RuralFirst pioneered new approaches in the deployment of 5G connectivity in rural areas, so organisations and communities could evolve and build more efficient business models.
This impacted nation-critical industries that operate in rural environments such as, agriculture, tourism, renewable energy and manufacturing. Even simply trialling 5G RuralFirst in some of the most remote and demanding environments in the UK was a challenge.
To date, 5G RuralFirst has successfully implemented 5G solutions across seven key areas:
5G RuralFirst demonstrates the partnership potential of 5G in rural areas to governments, policymakers, mobile network operators and other service providers. The initiative encouraged more long-term investments, while educating rural communities on the personal and professional benefits of 5G.
The 5G RuralFirst project also benefited from high profile marketing and attention. A new film produced by Cisco in conjunction with BBC Storyworks describes how 5G-connected technology is being tested at Agri-EPI Centre’s South West Dairy Development Centre in Somerset.
To find out more about the impact of the 5G RuralFirst project, explore the extensive list of use cases within each of the seven projects on the 5G RuralFirst website.
The project duration was between 01/04/2018 to 31/09/2019.
Registered office: Agri-EPI Centre Midlands Agri-Tech Innovation Hub, Poultry Lane, Edgmond Newport, England, TF10 8JZ
Company Reg. Number: 09922991
VAT Number: 240019456 (UK)