5G large scale pilots – 5G coverage along Transport Corridors – Works

The projects funded under this call are expected to accelerate the deployment of 5G SA across the Union, thus directly contributing to the achievement of the Digital Decade connectivity goals and the other Digital Decade targets. The benefits and impact of these actions will equally depend on the level of innovation present in the use cases addressed.

By closing deployment gaps and removing capacity bottlenecks and technical barriers, the deployment of 5G Corridors along the TEN-T networks will contribute to strengthening the social, economic, and territorial cohesion in the EU.

5G Corridor projects would deliver uninterrupted coverage, where service continuity will meet relevant quality-of-service requirements over the entire range of the corridor section. In turn, this will enable the developmment of a broad range of 5G-enabled CAM services, including road, rail, inland waterways and coastal maritime, and if appropriate in combination with multimodal transport, as well as complementary safety-related services where appropriate. The latter could be based on direct short range communication technologies, such as V2X and ITS-G5, and supporting complementarities between existing and future infrastructure deployment actions.

In the future, deployed infrastructure may contribute to the improved safety of road/rail/waterway/coastal operations (e.g. Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), Future Rail Mobile Communication System (FRMCS), River Information Services (RIS)) and enable 5G services for multiple application domains.

Key parameters to measure impact for the 5G Corridor topic, will be:

• Aggregate length of the corridor sections covered by 5G
• Spectrum bands enabled along the sections
• Inter-antenna distance, or in the case of deployment limited to passive netwok infrastructure only, inter-pylone/mast/towers
• Availability of various service features along transport routes, and
• Target network performance such as data rate and latency for each vehicle.

Projects may also contribute to the objectives of the Commission’s strategy on the mobility of the future in terms of road safety, optimised road traffic and reduced CO2 emissions and traffic congestion, as well as the competitiveness of the European telecom and automotive industries.

Please consult the call document for more information on the expected impact, including digital security requirements.

The overall objective of the call “5G Large-scale pilots” is to deploy large-scale 5G SA infrastructures that integrate connectivity and edge cloud capacities along the 3C Network value chain. Each pilot is expected to maximise the number of use cases enabled by 5G systems in areas such as healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing, education, mobility, transport (including use cases for Connected and Automated Mobility for road, railway and inland waterway as well as coastal maritime automation, or multimodal transport as appropriate) etc., targeting urban, sub-urban, rural, and cross-border areas.

The strategy is to bring together the demand side of individual projects (vertical sector use cases) with supply chain actors across the EU in the 3C Network ecosystem.

Specific objectives are the following:

• 5G SA large-scale pilots will stimulate a wider and faster deployment and take-up of 5G across Europe, while providing the foundation for developing “lead markets” for 5G and edge cloud systems, relying where applicable on technologies and standards developed under other EU programmes, in particular the Digital Europe Programme and Horizon Europe.
• 5G SA large-scale pilots should demonstrate the benefits gained in specific vertical applications, following the evolution from current electronic communications networks towards virtualised and cloud-native network functions and distributed telco edge cloud, opening new opportunities to Europe’s key industries.
• 5G SA large-scale pilots funded under this call for proposals are expected to leverage 5G infrastructures delivering leading-edge connectivity characteristics e.g.: symmetric gigabit performance, high-user-density, ubiquitous coverage (e.g. to connect IoT devices), low latency and very high reliability. They will contribute to the integration of devices, networks, cloud and edge computing, and communication capabilities for telco edge cloud deployment to realise a ubiquitous mesh of computing and communication resources. Where necessary, the pilots should bundle 5G networks with a cloud-to-edge middleware stack capable of supporting the data-intensive use cases and applications designed for a multi-purpose context (5G corridors and/or 5G applications for socio-economic drivers).
• These large-scale pilots are encouraged to cover multiple use cases. Cross-sector synergies between multiple use cases are expected to be enabled by 5G SA supporting local smart communities and connecting multiple sites distributed across multiple countries and regions.
• 5G SA large-scale pilots should be designed in a way that, with adaptations due to possible different requirements, they can be replicated across Europe, for instance under other funding programmes such as ERDF, EAFRD or national investments. Projects may be preceded by inception studies or best practices funded in earlier calls under this programme or may be based on any other preparatory work funded under other programmes (such as R&I under Horizon Europe).

In the case of 5G Corridor use cases, large-scale 5G SA pilots can be deployed along key European transport paths and the TEN-T network corridors including, but not limited to, the indicative list of 5G corridors in the Part V of the CEF Regulation, with a co-funding rate of up to 50%. The priority will be to support investments in cross-border sections involving two or more Member States.

The deployment of 5G corridors has been identified as a Multi-Country Project (MCP) in the Path to the Digital Decade Policy Programme. In addition, the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU) provides guidance in reviewing the 5G Strategic Deployment Agendas for both road and rail, with a particular focus on deployment scenarios, cooperation models, and regulatory incentives. Therefore, each proposal must foresee cooperation with relevant Programme Support Actions funded under CEF Digital as well as relevant working groups and fora of the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS), which is expected to provide strategic input to the implementation of the CEF Digital programme with the support of dedicated CSA projects.

Applicants may apply for grants towards work projects, covering the following categories:

• Deployment of passive network elements including civil works, e.g., ducts, dark fibre, 5G radio stations, towers, masts and/or pylons.
• Deployment and installation of active network elements, e.g., antennae, storage and computing capabilities such as network controllers, routers, switches, edge MEC/node etc.
• Deployment and installation of specific tracks-ide devices (e.g., road, rail) for CAM use cases, such as sensors, cameras etc. for traffic monitoring purposes, including connected road-side units.
• Studies for preparatory works to be deployed as part of proposed works within the same application, such as network planning.

Please consult the call document for more information on the scope, including digital security requirements.