Liverpool Private 5G Network

The Liverpool 5G consortium is set to build its own 5G network for health and social care services.

09:00 08 September 2020

The Liverpool 5G consortium is set to develop its own independent 5G network after winning £4.3million in funding from UK's Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sports's 5G Testbed and Trials Programme. The scheme will focus on exploring 5G applications that can be used to provide residents in selected areas in Liverpool with free and reliable connectivity for social care, education and health. 

 

The Connecting Health and Social Care Project will build on the previous 5G Health and Social Care Testbed in Liverpool. The latest initiative will be expanded to trial a range of new use cases and provide support to a medical-grade device designed to manage and monitor health conditions remotely. 

 

Ann Williams, Liverpool City Council's Commissioning & Contracts Manager for Adult Social Care, said: "The recent response to Covid-19 has demonstrated the need for increased use of remote health and social care services. Through this project, we will ensure that services are available to those in need, removing the barriers caused by lack of affordable connectivity." 

 

She noted the importance of 5G network in ensuring reliability for critical applications. She said: "Mobile operators struggle to reach the service legal agreements required for healthcare. You do not want your broadband to go down if you're being monitored for a heart condition and then to have a heart attack while you're waiting to be put back online. We want to run our own company as we found during the first trial that we could get a much quicker response when things go wrong."