Key facts
Duration: 2,5 years
Overall budget: 3.1M€
Countries: 4
Partners: 5
Overview
5GaaS is an innovation action initiative recently selected for funding by the European Commission under the Fast Track to Innovation (FTI) support programme – a programme to help partners promote close-to-the-market innovation activities in industry-driven consortia, in order to co-create and test breakthrough products, services or business processes that have the potential to revolutionise existing or create new markets.
Even though the potential of 5G technology is well known, having it massively deployed and available to end-users is not an easy task. To unlock all of 5G’s use cases at scale, smaller radio equipment and antennas (Small Cells) must be deployed in a dense manner across closer to end users. However, there is a catch: it is currently very difficult for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to be able to deploy this equipment at scale, within public spaces. Thus, a major obstacle must be overcome to ultimately unlock massive deployments and adoption: a common platform connecting both Infrastructure Owners (such as, but not limited to, Municipalities) and entities which are in dire need of having proper licensing and authorisation to install new or exploit ready-to-be-used 5G equipment, easing the process for site acquisition, asset and network management, in the most transparent and simple way.
5GaaS intends to develop and launch a new product in the form of a decentralised marketplace for the telecom ecosystem, under a new Joint Venture. This new platform is the culmination of three major components, two of them currently already available in the market: a centralised marketplace for site leasing and tenant management, from Ubiwhere, and dRAX, from Accelleran, an interoperable, standards-based and software-focused implementation of 5G networks. The other innovative component will come out of H2020 5GCity project, to which 5GaaS partners have collaboratively contributed to by building an automated 5G network slicing engine for Neutral Hosts.
5GaaS expands these layers, implementing a decentralised marketplace connecting the whole 5G value-chain of stakeholders such as MNOs, site owners, system integrators and hardware and software vendors, using blockchain technology.
During the project, the consortium will focus on pilot activities to showcase the benefits and capabilities of said platform, having it deployed across a total of 25 sites, in 5 different European cities.
EDP’s scope
EDP participates in 5GaaS through EDP NEW and E-REDES. As a Distribution System Operator and infrastructure holder, E-REDES will play the role of Neutral Host in the project and will grant access to part of its infrastructure for demonstration purposes.
EDP will be actively involved in demonstration and validation activities (monitoring pilots and KPIs), by both facilitating access to potential sites which can be onboarded into the platform, and by leveraging the platform’s automated network slicing for neutral hosts model. EDP will also participate in the development and validation of the business model of the platform for all the stakeholders, benchmarking the market potential and the new possible revenue streams for EDP.
Key facts of 5GaaS project
Starting on October 2020, the project is composed of 5 partners from 4 European countries and will last 30 months with a total grant of 2,4M€ from the European Commission.
Demonstration activities will take place in 25 sites in cities such as Aveiro, Coimbra, Évora, Helsinki and Barcelona.
5GaaS intends to legally create a new business entity in the form of a Joint Venture – between a set of partners of the project – focused on the market-uptake of 5GaaS product.
Objectives
- Demonstration of 5GaaS in at least 5 European cities, targeting a total of 25 sites, by repurposing existing infrastructuring and installing new smart and connected urban furniture with built-in telco equipment. Targeted cities are Aveiro, Coimbra, Évora, Helsinki and Barcelona.
- 5GaaS Joint Venture creation
- Acquisition of 5 different prospective customers
- 3 new city pilots in the pipeline
- 500 5G sites available on the platform
Partners
