Vodafone and Coventry University to develop new broadcast and media 5G applications

Vodafone and Coventry University have collaborated to expand their 5G Standalone 5GSA Media Innovation Lab in Coventry to develop new 5G use cases around media and broadcast events such as festivals and live content contribution in isolated locations.

Vodafone and Coventry University deployed the UK’s first live 5G Standalone (5G SA) network in 2020 to enable healthcare students to take immersive AR and VR tours of the human body.

Broadcasters and other media companies and software developers will have access to the lab to develop 5G use cases for the media industry, working alongside Vodafone engineers and Coventry University academics.

The lab will allow the development and testing of end-to-end solutions in a safe and configurable environment.

Network slicing is a new capability enabled by 5G Standalone to allow mobile operators to create separate and isolated networks for different use cases. Each slice can be configured slightly differently, and because they are isolated, the performance on one would not impact another.

Danny Kelly, Head of Innovation at Vodafone Business UK said “Finding 5GSA uses for the media makes perfect sense as the technology is well suited to this sector which creates digitally dense content at high volume in locations that are isolated or at large scale events where the public network is crowded”

Coventry University Vice Chancellor, John Lathan said: “We are delighted we have been able to extend our collaboration with Vodafone following the development of the standalone 5G network that has been so successfully used by our healthcare students. This new project will expand our work into the media arena to see how our experts can work with the broadcasting industry on how this technology can be put to use.”