The West Mercia Rural 5G project, testing and trialling the benefits of 5G in rural areas, will launch on the Wednesday 1 April, following a successful bid which was led by the Worcestershire County Council.
5G will help to continue the progress and development of technological innovation for Health services and Adult Social Care in parts of rural Worcestershire.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport last week announced the award of £3.3m to Worcestershire County Council who will be the lead partner for the project.
Other partners in the project include local NHS organisations, alongside Airband and Three – who will plan, build and operate the 5G network. Shropshire Council is also a partner in the project.
Today over 50 percent of staff work away from their office at least 2.5 days a week which while giving businesses agility, improved scheduling and lower staff turnover, can make connecting, sharing and engaging teams difficult, the trials will look to address this and take advantage of network-related tasks, such as online sales or sharing large files in the cloud will become faster and more efficient in rural areas, giving businesses huge productivity gains and boosting staff morale.
Sharon Smith, Chief Executive Herefordshire & Worcestershire Chamber of Commerce, commented: “The eventual implementation of 5G will allow for improved connectivity across the region, specifically a much-needed vast improvement in rural areas, allow for better experience of remote working and collaboration and will underpin Industry 4.0 where everything is connected, processed and digitalised.”
Councillor Ken Pollock, Worcestershire County Council’s cabinet member with responsibility for economy and infrastructure, said: “Worcestershire County Council is delighted to have been successful in leading a bid which will investigate the positive impacts that emerging 5G technologies could have on rural communities, around how 5G networks can be built and their use in supporting health and social care services. The project highlights the huge joint ambitions of the innovative public and private sector partners we have drawn together, as we strive to find ways to improve connectivity and provide access to key services in rural areas.”
“At a time of increasing demand for public services, improvements in connected technologies offer new ways of working that can help maintain and improve service delivery and quality of life for residents and businesses alike.”
The project will look to trial ways in which we can improve connectivity in rural areas, and then look to explore how the improved connection can be used to benefit local residents. Its primary focus will be on trialling and developing innovative ways to deploy 5G networks in rural areas.
Mark Stansfeld, Chair of Worcestershire LEP and Chair of Airband, said: “We welcome the terrific news that Worcestershire is a winner in this new round of 5G funding. The work of the Worcestershire 5G consortium has already provided exciting productivity results with the UK’s first live 5G factory trials being conducted with partners Worcester Bosch and Mazak.
5G presents a great opportunity to support health and social care services in the county and we look forward to supporting on this new project to demonstrate the benefits of 5G for local residents within rural communities.”
Worcestershire has already received national success with 5G technology as the county was one of six Government funded Phase 1 testbeds and hosted the UK’s first live 5G factory trial with manufacturing partners, Worcester Bosch and Yamazaki Mazak. The Worcestershire 5G consortium studied the impact of 5G in a landmark step towards the creation of smart factories in Britain. This was proved with results indicating a boost in productivity for manufacturing businesses utilising 5G applications.
For further information on the new fund, please visit here.
Photo Caption: Members of the Worcestershire 5G Consortium