Vodafone and Milan, an increasingly successful combination, in the name of 5G. The telephone company, which seven months ago was awarded the 5G trial in the Milan metropolitan area, for which it will invest 90 million with the goal of covering 80% of the population by 2018 and to complete the coverage by the end of 2019, presented in the Lombard capital "Action for 5G", the tender launched in January and dedicated to startups, SMEs and social enterprises that want to contribute their innovative projects to the development of 5G in Italy.
“A real call to arms – said the CEO of Vodafone Italia, Aldo Bisio -: for me 5G means above all the Internet of things but there is also much more, from robotics to apps. Digitization is the fourth industrial revolution, which will be faster and more disruptive than the previous ones and which will affect everyone, any human activitywith significant benefits to the economy. Even more than the information revolution of the years 1970-2000, which came to multiply the world GDP by 450%”.
Vodafone is already working with 38 partners, both scientific and industrial, such as the Milan Polytechnic, Atm, the Municipality of Milan, Eni, Fs, Poste, Sky, Huawei, FCA and Pirelli, to name a few. out of 41 concrete projects already defined, which range across all fields of city life: from transport to safety, from Industry 4.0 to healthcare up to energy and entertainment. “5G technology has characteristics that were unthinkable until yesterday – he said Sabrina Baggioni, 5G Program Lead of Vodafone Italy -: it will travel at 10GB per second with a latency reduced to 1 millisecond".
The first connection to 5G officially took place in October, in collaboration with Huawei: it was the first case in Italy and during the test download speeds of over 2,7 GB per second were achieved. However, the goal is to make Milan the European capital of 5G, and for this reason - in collaboration with PoliHub - "Action for 5G" has been launched, to involve the best innovative energies at the service of the cause. “There are three requirements for the tender – explained Sabrina Baggioni -: that 5G technology is essential to the project, which would not exist without 5G; that the projects are concrete and that they have a social, environmental and economic impact". Applications are open until March 31 on www.actionfor5g.it
The event was also an opportunity to present some of the projects among the 41 user cases already launched. Intellitronika for example, it provides advanced technological solutions for law enforcement and civil and military security. Their solution is called CODES. and is an integrated system for law enforcement which already today allows them, while on the move, to access databases remotely, to use an instant messaging system with the operations centre, to use maps and to send and receive photos and videos via various devices including BodyCam, video cameras wearable by operating personnel.
It was also presented LIFE, all-Italian research startup at the forefront of the wearable, which designs and manufactures smart clothes and high-accuracy physiological data analysis systems, thus reinventing the world of health and wellness. Its product linked to 5G testing is a shirt with integrated sensors capable of detecting measurements such as ECG and biorhythms in real time.
The Milanese "startup factory". e-novia, which in the last two years he brought 14 companies to market, he presents YAPE, an electric, ultralight and semi-autonomous driving vehicle for last-mile delivery. Practically a small robot which, remotely monitored (but able to go independently to the established places), will move easily in the city, dribbling the traffic and not polluting, for the less heavy and closest deliveries, precisely within the radius of the last mile. A possible revolution, in the age of Amazon and above all of Prime.
Finally, the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering of the Politecnico di Milano presents a immersive learning system through Mixed Reality. The main enabling factors of 5G for this solution are: high transmission capacity and low latency to allow a dynamic and fluid information-rich learning experience with a large number of mobile devices. Furthermore, the processing and rendering capacity moved from the viewer to the proximity 5G network (Multi-access Edge Computing) opens up evolutionary AR/VR scenarios with high interaction and mobility.
