The Government has today launched a competition which will see rural locations awarded a share of a \u00a330 million fund to run trials of 5G-related technology.<\/p>\n
At our recent event Dorset’s Digital Future – a Smart Rural Place<\/a> delegates told us that lack of mobile connectivity was a real issue for them.<\/p>\n From subsequent meetings with local organisations, service providers, residents and businesses it’s clear that mobile coverage is leading to frustrations, increased costs, holding back growth and may even be costing lives.<\/p>\n I wrote last month about how better mobile connectivity might improve life in rural areas like Dorset<\/a>. But 5G in predominately areas such as ours will be several (6+) years away without intervention or incentivisation by local and \/ or central government.<\/p>\n To reflect the challenging economics of providing connectivity in rural areas, the Government has today launched the Rural Connected Communities (RCC) programme<\/a> to explore new commercial models and technical solutions to improve mobile coverage.<\/p>\n The RCC competition will fund up to ten 5G research and development projects over two years.<\/p>\n The projects will trial innovative use cases and technical solutions to build the business case for investment in rural connectivity and explore the capabilities of 5G to benefit rural communities. They will also help demonstrate demand from a variety of economic sectors and rural communities for 5G technologies.<\/p>\n We are working with a specialist telecommunications consultant to form a consortium\u00a0including academia, the public, private and third sectors to<\/span> prepare a bid for rural Dorset to be submitted later this year.<\/span><\/p>\n The links below provide more information about 5G, plus the potential benefits and challenges of deploying better mobile connectivity in rural areas.<\/p>\n What is 5G?<\/a><\/p>\n Industrial Internet of Things<\/a><\/p>\n Challenges of a 5G build<\/a><\/p>\n Public Health Dorset statement on possible health concerns<\/a><\/p>\n If you are interested in staying up to date with our bid to Government and the latest digital news from Dorset then follow us on twitter<\/a> or sign up for our e-newsletters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Government has today launched a competition which will see rural locations awarded a share of a \u00a330 million fund to run trials of 5G-related technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/files\/2019\/08\/Digital-Workshop-outcomes-picture.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":494,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions\/494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}