TIM, Fastweb and Huawei have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the municipalities of Bari and Matera for the launch of a partnership aimed at giving a further boost to the trial of 5G technology promoted by the Ministry of Economic Development. This means that the two cities will become among the first places in the world to be covered by the future network of fifth generation that will enable the development of innovative services for citizens, companies and public administration of these areas.
By signing the Memorandum, the municipalities of Bari and Matera, together with the three leading companies involved in the project "Bari Matera 5G" have committed their full cooperation for the implementation, to start already in the first six months of this year, of applications and services based on 5G technology, linked to the Smart City and to the IoT, Internet of Things, in order to enrich the digital ecosystem of these areas.
Within this agreement, a Parithetic Committee, composed of partners, representatives of the municipalities and a representative of the Ministry for Economic Development, will be created for the purpose of implementing the activities identified in the design phase and facilitating the resolution of any critical issues related to it.
"We have formulated some concrete actions to embrace the future also in Southern Italy – explains the Mayor of Bari, Antonio Decaro. This project and the cooperation between these two important cities in Southern Italy is a demonstration that this region is changing its reference paradigm and it is doing so through collaboration. This is despite the fact that there is still a long way to go and there are still many activities that will be required in order to fill the gap that divides this region from other areas of the country. We are finally talking about talents, skills, technologies, companies and quality work. And it is from this perspective that the investments and activities of 5G represent a fundamental infrastructure that will allow for meeting the challenges that we have been talking about for too long".
The Councillor for Innovation of the Municipality of Matera, Enzo Acito, has stated: "In order to allow the economic operators to carry out trials and research and innovation activities, the Municipality of Matera has made available the prestigious San Rocco building which will become the HUB for research and innovations. This is a strong message of future collaboration that the Matera Municipality is offering to the 5G project".
"5G allows to create an ecosystem that will favour primarily the industrial development of Bari and the growth of tourism for Matera - declared Enrico Maria Bagnasco, Secretary of the General Assembly of Consorzio Bari Matera 5G.Industrial and service processes will become fully digital, from manufacturing to shipping, from environmental monitoring to agriculture, from smart cities to urban mobility, from healthcare to mobility and public safety. Our objective is to create a business network that enhances the value of the two areas through the creation of a permanent 5G laboratory".
The 5G network in the two cities, activated thanks to the frequency 3.7-3.8 GHz, made available by MISE, will reach 75% coverage of the population by the end of 2018 while the full coverage of the population is expected by 2019.
The TIM, Fastweb and Huawei trial will create an open digital platform capable of supporting the development of application scenarios not only in the sectors of Smart City, Public Safety, Environmental monitoring, Industry 4.0, Health 5G but also Media Education and virtual reality, mobility and road safety; in order to enhance further the value of the uniqueness of these areas, the emphasis will be on applications in the sectors of logistics, culture and tourism, and smart agriculture.
The enormous potential of 5G, which during the laboratory tests in January 2018, reached a record speed of 3 Gigabits per second and extremely low radio latency times in the order of two milliseconds, has also been confirmed in the field when two weeks ago the first 5G antenna in Italy was activated in Matera.
The 5G development will involve a radical digital transformation of the involved areas which, at the end of the trial, will continue to benefit from some technological assets made available by TIM, Fastweb and Huawei, and from the expertise developed during the trial.