The 5G Smart Tourism project was led by the West of England Combined Authority and funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS). It brought together over 20 organisations to expand the 5G testbed infrastructure in the West of England, developed by the University of Bristol Smart Internet Lab, to explore novel 5G technologies and services.

Originally set to be a year-long project, a six-month extension was granted to build on the ground-breaking research and development work that had been carried out.

Digital experts teamed up with some of the region’s biggest tourist attractions, including The Roman Baths, We the Curious, M Shed and Millennium Square to demonstrate the ground-breaking potential of 5G for the tourism sector.

The project held two region-wide showcases that attracted hundreds of visitors to experience the future of visitor attractions, including a live demonstration at the Bristol Harbour Festival. Across the events, visitors enjoyed a glimpse of a 5G future using Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), 3D motion tracking, and 4k 360º content streaming. Behind the scenes, 5G enabled network slicing was developed to prioritise connectivity for incident response in the case of a public emergency.

Duration

•  March 2018 – September 2019

Funding

• DCMS funding: £5m

• Total project value: £ 8m

Partners

• 3-Sixty

• Aardman

• BBC R&D

• BT

• Bath and North East Somerset council

• Bristol City Council

• Bristol Futures Global

• Bristol Is Open

• Bristol VR Lab

• Business West

• CCS

• Destination Bristol

• Digital Catapult

• IBI

• Interdigital

• Landmrk

• Mativision

• Mo – sys

• M-Shed

• Smartify

• The Grand Appeal

• University of Bristol

• Watershed

• Zeetta Networks