Telenor Group will have responsibility for coordinating the EUR 20 million European project to accelerate 5G across Europe.
Telenor, British Telecom, Telefonica, SES, Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, Cisco Systems, Keysight and Alticelabs are some of the 23 partner members of the 5G Verticals INNovation Infrastructure (5G-VINNI) project.

The three year project is designed to ease uptake of 5G in Europe. The 5G project validates the performance of new 5G technologies, and explore solutions for vertical industries such as public safety, eHealth, shipping, transportation, media and entertainment and automotive.

“Being one of three large-scale test platforms for Europe, 5G-VINNI will help propel the development of 5G,” said Patrick Waldemar, vice president of Telenor Research, who will manage the project for Telenor Group.

5G-VINNI, financed by the EU’s Horizon2020 program, will be run at four main sites in Norway, UK, Spain and Greece. Sites will also be established in Germany and Portugal. Open APIs will be provided in order to ensure easy access to the 5G-VINNI facility.

Telenor will run the 5G facility in Norway and host in Kongsberg and in greater Oslo area. Nokia will provide the virtualization platform and end-to-end orchestration, Ericsson and Huawei will supply 5G radios and core, and Cisco will deliver a distributed IoT data fabric service.