BT has signed a new partnership to investigate real-world applications for 5G with Ericsson and King’s College London.
The multi-year collaboration will look at use cases in commercial and consumer markets, with a particular focus on mission-critical services such as medical applications.
This will include both technical and economic aspects of 5G technologies.
BT has worked with Ericsson to build a 5G Proof of Concept Center at the BT Labs in Adastral Park, BT’s main research centre.
Howard Watson, CEO, BT Technology, Service & Operations, and BT Group CIO, said: “The initial focus of the collaboration is on Proof of Concept solutions and trials of services needing both high availability and low latency – both key features of the forthcoming 5G technology.”
It is the second 5G research partnership BT has signed this week, after it announced it would work on 5G network slicing with Huawei.
BT and Nokia also announced in August 2016 that they would collaborate on 5G use cases and trials, and to jointly develop 5G standards and equipment.
Anders Lindblad, Senior Vice President and Head of Business Unit IT & Cloud Products, said: “5G is the foundation for expanding the potential to all Industries. The cooperation with BT to trial services using 5G technology demonstrates Ericsson’s commitment to drive market demand and adoption.”
The Sweden-based vendor signed a partnership deal with Altice to test 5G services in Portugal earlier this week.
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