5G: Wales

(asked on 9th March 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what progress has been made on the OpenRan 5G project rollout in Wales; what the planned timetable is for that project to go live in Ynys Môn constituency; and what assessment she has made of the potential merits of using that project as an exemplar for net zero 5G provision.


Answered by
Julia Lopez Portrait
Julia Lopez
Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
This question was answered on 14th March 2022

The government continues to explore the role of interoperable technologies, such as Open RAN (Radio Access Network), in the future of our telecommunications networks as part of the 5G Supply Chain Diversification Strategy, published in November last year. Open RAN is an emerging technology that promises efficiency, flexibility and scalability gains. Government’s commitments in this space include £15m of investment in SONIC Labs (the SmartRAN Open Networks Interoperability Centre), the £36m Future RAN Competition (FRANC), and the £1.2m NeutrORAN project in partnership with NEC in North Wales.

NeutrORAN is a project which aims to develop a multi-operator, ‘neutral host’ solution for 4G and then 5G in Wales; in Cefn Du and Menai Science Park (M-Sparc) in Ynys Môn (Anglesey). This style of deployment will enable a more cost efficient way to deliver capacity and coverage to underserved regions. NeutrORAN has been up and running since 2019 and has been extended up to March 2023.

There are also three FRANC projects in Wales, covering a range of key topics to develop power efficient, flexible, and scalable 5G Open RAN. The government is committed to the net zero agenda, and improving the power efficiency of Open RAN solutions was one of the priorities against which FRANC applicants were assessed. We look forward to seeing how those projects in Wales, and across the UK, advance the environmental credentials of Open RAN and push our networks towards carbon neutrality.

UK network operators are now beginning to deploy Open RAN solutions in the field. Notably, Vodafone has committed to deploy 2500 4G and 5G sites across Wales and the south west of England. Three sites in Wales are already live: Builth Wells, Powys; Pendine, Carmarthenshire; and Halkyn, Flintshire.

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