Ten new projects have been selected for €50 million of European Union (EU) funding from a second call for proposals under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF Digital) programme. The focus of the funding is 5G for Smart Communities’, and includes a couple of notable private 5G efforts. It follows an initial CEF Digital call in late 2022, which saw seven projects share €25 million, of which at least three were enterprise-led private 5G projects.
A statement said: “The calls were designed to pilot the deployment of 5G standalone (SA) systems, thus contributing to the EU’s Digital Decade targets” – which sets out the bloc’s 2030 targets for digital skills, business, government, and infrastructure. It said: “A good starting base of 17 CEF Digital projects will soon be running throughout Europe… represent[ing] a valuable best-practice action for 5G SA systems, aiming to catalyse private investment in the sector.”
A full list of all 17 projects is included below. Many (seven, out of 17) are focused on the delivery of healthcare services, whether to remote areas, or in pursuit of efficiencies and innovations in urban districts. Almost a third (five out of 17) are loosely focused on public safety (and disaster relief) and public services (smart city). Besides, there are a couple of more-niche connectivity projects, one on a university campus and one to connect rural backwaters, and a couple more that are concerned with smart logistics; a final project is geared to smart agriculture.
The new private 5G projects include €1.55 million for Oulu University Hospital in Finland (“wireless operating rooms… and machine vision based surgical navigation”), just under €1 million for a smart-port exercise at Port of Ploce (SmartPortPloce) in Croatia, and further €1.25 million for a smart logistics R&D project at TUKE University in Slovakia. The private 5G network at Oulu University Hospital (Network O) is being managed by Edzcom; the TUKE logistics R&D network (TUKE 5GSC) is being handled by Slovak Telekom
Of the older projects, Vodafone is supplying private 5G networks to the University of Palermo in Italy (5G4ASSAC) and to a “demonstration farm” (5GAGRIHUB) in Mosonmagyaróvár in Hungary, funded by EU grants of €4 million and almost €400,000, respectively. As well, private 5G networks are being deployed at the Frankfurt University Hospital in Germany (5G4UH; €3.34 million) and by local specialist Citymesh in the Belgian city of Wavre (CONNECTOW; €2.98 million) to support drones for local firefighters and police services.
WAVE-TWO PROJECTS (JANUARY 2024)
1 | 5GENIUS – university connectivity (Belgium)
The project aims to install a 5G network at the University College of Ghent. It is designed to address the growing need for high-speed connectivity on campus and provide cutting-edge network services. This project is not solely focused on technical advancements, but seeks to serve the broader community by providing uninterrupted and high-quality services to businesses and start-ups, students and researchers, and other relevant stakeholders in the emerging smart (campus) community.
Coordinator: CITYMESH NV
EU contribution: €1.01m
2 | 5G-TERRA – rural healthcare (Greece)
The project aims to provide high-quality 5G to customers in remote and sparsely populated areas in Greece for personal, business and governmental growth – to enable state-of-the-art healthcare and to support the deployment of 5G as part of Europe’s digital transformation. Indicative examples of use case scenarios include the use of smart glasses for live-video, remote support of the carers / first-aid services / ambulance crew from doctors in the medical facilities, and/or wireless, handheld ultrasound devices for whole-body scanning and delivery of high quality images.
Coordinator: WINGS
EU contribution: €4.95m
3 | 5G4LIVES – public safety, natural disasters (Latvia, Italy)
The 5G4LIVES project is implemented across two geographic clusters: Latvia and Italy. The project aims to leverage 5G and other innovative technologies, such as UAVs (drones) and alternative hydrogen power, to enhance public safety and environmental health. In Latvia, partners will focus on developing a solution based on drones and 5G for monitoring and rescue in hard-to-reach areas in Riga. This will enable the police to intervene more promptly and sustainably. In Italy, partners in Turin will develop a 5G-enabled, real-time situational awareness and vulnerability assessment service to mitigate the threat from and impact of natural disasters across the local hillside.
Coordinator: RIGA CITY COUNCIL
EU contribution: €2.87m
4 | Network O – smart healthcare (Finland)
The project aims to implement a secure 5G infrastructure for next-generation wireless AR/VR healthcare solutions. It consists of the implementation of a private 5G network covering several units of the Oulu University Hospital which is intended to serve as a development and research environment for advanced information sharing and visualisation. The project will enable a new way of work in the wireless operating rooms and facilitate innovations, such as machine vision based surgical navigation. The 5G wireless network, together with wearables and a visualisation application, will provide surgeons, nurses and anaesthetists with personalised information in AR and VR modes.
Coordinator: Edzcom
EU contribution: €1.55m
5 | SmartPortPloce – port logistics (Croatia)
The project aims to enhance the level and quality of public services provided by the Port of Ploce Authority, through the deployment of a dedicated private 5G network in the port area. The project’s objective is to establish leading-edge connectivity capable of large data processing, sharing and analytics, which will allow the optimisation of traffic and logistic processes in the port area. The project supports the implementation of three innovative data intensive use cases: introducing a RTLS; surveillance and record keeping of cargo manipulation; incident prevention and management.
Coordinator: PORT OF PLOCE AUTHORITY
EU contribution: €958,125
6 | 5G Healthcare – smart healthcare (Portugal)
The project, led by NOS Comunicações, aims to use 5G to foster advanced use cases that will improve the experience of the community of Portugal Northern Region (Porto District) requiring hospital services. The purpose is to deploy several use cases, demonstrating the enormous potential that connectivity to the 5G network can achieve in the healthcare sector, such as 5G connectivity in emergency vehicles (ambulances and helicopters), medical training resorting to live 5G supported video feed from a robotic i system, remote support to diagnosis and monitoring via 5G/IoT and virtual/augmented reality in the recovery of patients.
Coordinator: NOS COMUNICACOES
Total EU contribution: €2.49m
7 | 5G.RURAL – rural connectivity (Portugal)
The project aims to test integrated smart communities models enabled by shared access to 5G in rural areas, beyond the conventional licenced coverage. The first neutral hosting 5G infrastructure will be implemented across the Alentejo region in less densely populated areas. The project supports communities facing a lack of digital environment by deploying infrastructure elements, such as antennas and 5G access, and ensures the development of smart communities, with a focus on villages with lack of digital infrastructure, via enabling the smart services, access and interconnectivity.
Coordinator: Dstelecom S.A.
EU contribution: €3.95m
8 | 5GMHI – smart healthcare (Sweden)
The project aims to create insights about how healthcare needs in the Region of Stockholm can be met with 5G technology and the related effects and quality improvements, and how new services can be provided in healthcare, for the benefit of the region’s residents, patients, and employees. The project will focus on solutions for the emergency medical services using 5G video communication to facilitate resource optimization and opportunities for increased patient safety and quality of care through drones and ambulance mounted cameras.
Coordinator: Region Stockholm
Total EU contribution: €6.38m
9 | ED5GE – smart city (Sweden)
The project aims to deploy a 5G edge network infrastructure with the latest features such as network slicing and network-based positioning to provide leading edge computing connectivity to enable low-latency, reliable and IoT connected applications and use cases for public authorities in four Smart Community areas. The project will cover different use cases for three cities in the north of Sweden involved in… transformation towards a fossil free society… and one farming testbed site in a community in mid-Sweden for improving agriculture efficiency and safety.
Coordinator: Telia Sverige
Total EU contribution: €3.01m
10 | TUKE 5GSC – logistics / utilities; Slovakia
The project aims to prepare and deploy a private state of the art 5G network at TUKE university in Kosice in order to test and develop two use cases and deliver blueprints of these. The main objective is to support the early deployment of 5G-based systems that enable to develop and test a smart logistics use case and a smart energy metering use case. Subsequently the project wants to provide use case blueprints for dissemination in other smart communities and thereby support 5G best practices in different sectors that can serve as templates for possible replication.
Coordinator: Slovak Telekom
Total EU contribution: €1.25m
WAVE-ONE PROJECTS (DECEMBER 2022)
1 | 5G4ASSAC – healthcare, education (Italy)
The project will implement a private 5G network to support new functional approaches to education and training in universities and hospitals, as well as the creation of a continuous care system. Vodafone and the University of Palermo will run two use cases in the health and education domains to optimise learning and training processes and to improve care methods. The end-users benefiting from the project are students, professors, researchers, and patients suffering from severe chronic diseases in the cities of Palermo and Trapani.
Coordinator: Vodafone
EU contribution: €4m
2 | 5G4UH – healthcare (Germany)
The project will deploy a leading-edge 5G infrastructure at the Frankfurt University Hospital in Germany, enabling innovative 5G use cases and improving the provision of public health services. There will be tele-ultrasound devices as well as innovative monitoring solutions and new solutions to organise hospital logistics – all of which contribute to better care, to more efficient processes and to better use of resources and medical skills.
Coordinator: n/a
EU contribution: €3.34m
3 | 5GAGRIHUB – agriculture (Hungary)
A private 5G network hub will be established at a demonstration farm in Mosonmagyaróvár, Hungary, to enable end-to-end solutions in agriculture. Vodafone (HU) will carry out three use cases focusing on the agriculture sector: row crop cultivator in field crop production; machine-to-machine connection in field crop production; weed monitoring and spraying plan with machine-to-machine connection in field crop production
Coordinator: Vodafone
EU contribution: €399.940
4 | CONNECTOW – public safety (Belgium)
Citymesh and the Belgian city of Wavre will build a state-of-the-art private 5G network complying with current security standards and attaining the highest level of performance. The EU-funded CONNECTOW project will install a city-wide 5G network so that firefighters and police services can use safety drones in emergency situations. Additionally, 5G smart meters will be installed so that the city of Wavre can better manage and green its energy consumption.
Coordinator: Citymesh
EU contribution: €2.98m
5 | Flanders Smart Fields – healthcare (Belgium)
The Westhoek region (‘Flanders Fields’) has high historical value as a major battle theatre on the Western Front during the First World War. The Flanders Smart Fields project will provide standalone 5G coverage for the Westhoek region to support innovative applications in healthcare and education. Deploying a performant 5G network throughout the region will enable e-health services like virtual video consultations and real-time remote assistance from doctors located in the hospital to emergency response units. Medical transportations between different hospitals will be improved by using 5G drones; children who are sick… will be able to attend classes remotely.
Coordinator: n/a
EU contribution: €4.13m
6 | Hi5 – public services (France)
Hi5 is a visionary project for rolling out 5G technology in the Toulouse metropolitan area by 2025. It will deliver leading-edge connectivity to public services, building on the existing fibre-optic network and data centres, focuses on five use cases: city services; event connectivity; a ‘mobility lab’ for start-ups and small enterprises, teaching and academic research at the University of Blagnac; and high-speed video data offloading on public transport.
Coordinator: n/a
EU contribution: €2.81m
7 | PPDR 5G – public safety, disaster relief (Hungary)
A disaster-resilient 5G network will be implemented along the 136.7km Hungarian-Ukrainian border to support real-time communication with broadband voice/data/image/video transmission services, with extensive coverage, high availability, high (gigabit) bandwidth and reliability for public authorities and agencies (in particular, ambulance services, police and border guards ) performing public tasks (health, police and border protection). Professional Mobilradio (Pro-M) and IdomSoft Zrt will run multiple use cases linked to health services, law enforcement, and border protection.
Coordinator: Pro-M
EU contribution: €4m
