Ubiquitous Connectivity
5G RuralDorset
Scroll down to explore
5G RuralDorset was a ground-breaking project to understand how next generation connectivity can help people live better, safer and more prosperous lives in rural communities, even in environments as sensitive as Dorset’s UNESCO-designated world heritage coastline. We aimed to show how enhanced connectivity can make Dorset a better place to live, work and visit.
This research and development project contributed to the understanding of how 5G can be used to address specific challenges within 4 main areas – agriculture and aquaculture, developing a rural business accelerator, coastal safety, and creating an innovation accelerator.
Since its launch, 5G Rural Dorset has won several awards:
Connected Britain 2021 Awards
- The Barrier Removal Award
- The 5G Initiative Award
- The Sustainability Award
UK5G Awards
- Collaborative Engagement
Connected Britain 2022 Awards
- The Access Innovation Award
Our Role in 5G RuralDorset
As part of 5G RuralDoreset we developed a network that could be used for the coastal safety trials, integrating the 5G core at our Future Networks Development Centre with infrastructure provided by other partners. We also investigated long-term options for rolling out enhanced connectivity with neutral hosting – the sharing of infrastructure between operators – and techniques for doing this, with consideration to costs and impact on the local area.
In addition to the above, our agriculture team supported the future of food trials, ensuring applications are designed and delivered based upon clear user need and business justification, and supporting the use of satellite connectivity and imagery within these use cases.
Research Areas
01
Future of Food
01
Future of Food
The agriculture and aquaculture trials identified how 5G connectivity could benefit the farming industry by solving connectivity issues as well as enabling improved productivity and reduced environmental impact.
02
Rural Business Accelerator
02
Rural Business Accelerator
Enhanced mobile coverage for locals and 1m people who visit each year, enabling experiences such as live virtual and augmented reality at Camp Bestival.
03
Connected Coast
03
Connected Coast
These trials looked at public coastal safety in areas such as emergency response and accident prevention measures such as connected, live signage and high footfall detection.
04
Innovation Accelerator
04
Innovation Accelerator
A testbed network was built at the heart of Dorset Innovation Park to allow defence, security, and marine teams to collaborate with technology companies.
Neutral Host
Neutral Hosting is an extension, and significant improvement, on the traditional Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) approach. In a neutral host setup, the equipment used (such as the base station equipment) is no longer operator-specific as the equipment becomes operator-agnostic. This makes it more straightforward to deploy one set of equipment through a building or location and serve users of all mobile networks from that equipment. At the outset, this makes it more affordable to deliver 5G services in rural and other hard-to-reach areas.
Within this project we looked at multiple deployment options of the 5G neutral host (NH) concept including active infrastructure sharing based on common and dedicated spectrum and common core network functions, as well as looking at the business challenges and security aspects. We also completed a comprehensive study on the virtualisation of RAN (Radio Access Network) components of the NH based on proprietary vRAN (virtual RAN) and open O-RAN (Open RAN) architectures, as well as a comparison among the various architectural references, which will provide the optimum implementation strategy towards the commercialisation of NH platforms.
Project Partners
