Surrey University at the Mobile World Congress

Surrey Universities’ 5GIC attends the world’s first end-to-end 5G network at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

As a member of the 5GIC, Countrywide Telecoms are sharing news from the Mobile World Congress. This week past, Surrey University along with the University of Bristol and King’s College London have been at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, demonstrating their 5G technology. Amongst the 3D printing, virtual reality and ingenious app ideas, ‘5G for sports’.

Mobile World Conference is the largest mobile event for 2018, with more than 107,000 attendees and professionals from 205 different countries exhibiting and visiting the newest, most breakthrough technologies. Amongst the virtual reality devices, 3D printers and ingenious app ideas, the Universities demonstrated 5G through ‘5G for Sports’. This consisted of a remotely controlled, 5G connected robotic football player, which visitors could use to play interactive games with. The immersive experience was supported by ‘ultra reliable and low latency communications’, made accessible through 5G.

The theme of this years’ Mobile World Congress was ‘creating a better future, today.’ Over 55 percent of the attendees held senior-level positions, including more than 7,700 CEOs. With top decision makers making the congress a priority, it is clear that the impact of 5G is highly anticipated. Professor Rahim Tafazolli, Director and Founder of the 5G Innovation Centre at the University of Surrey and the 5GUK project leader, spoke of the results of the newest breakthroughs in the G technology, “5G is not only about mobile communication, broadband communication and increasing the speed by factor of 10 compared to 4G – another important aspect is automation. This means automating future factories, future hospitals, future cities and so much more – 5G will have a truly transforming impact on all of our daily lives.”

Where does Countrywide fit in?

Being part of the global race to achieve the newest and most advanced connectivity is something we prize as wholly aligned to our key beliefs; the innovation needed to create, the courage to bring new ideas to the table, and the passion that we have for modernity and technology. The 5GIC, the 5G innovation centre in Guildford, Surrey, brings together leading expertise in academic technology and key industry partners such as EE, Telefonica, Vodafone, BT, Samsung and the BBC, to unite in a shared vision of the UK being the leading innovator in telecommunication services. The technology was made possible thanks to a £16 million funding from Government, the investment of which will ensure that the UK continues to be world-class in 5G innovation and development through commercial exploitation, potentially adding up to £173 billion to the economy by 2030. Keith Robson, COO of 5GIC, says, ‘Potentially competitive companies can work together, in a trusted environment, to develop these new systems…in terms of technical capabilities, this is the only institution that can offer full end-to-end tests across the whole range of 5G technologies’. The 5GIC programme is all about getting some of the leading companies and specialists in the industry and academically to work together and achieve something great for the entirety of modern society.

5GIC’s vision is to provide for an evolving world. They see a world in which 5G infrastructure should be user-centric, with the agility to deliver consistently sufficient data rates and low latency, to give infinite capacity. Opening new channels and ways of enabling higher performing network capabilities, by giving the ability to the user to access the best quality of experience, is a stepping stone to a better connected, and therefore, a greater society. You can monitor all the latest updates from the 5GIC here. You can also download a white paper concerning the vision of 5G, and what the advancement in the latest wireless network innovation may mean here (written by Huawei).

Mobile World Congress is the largest exhibition for the mobile industry and a conference featuring prominent executives representing mobile operators, device manufacturers, technology providers, vendors and content owners from across the world. Watch out for the next event, in 2019!