Welcome To The 5G New Thinking Rural Connectivity Toolkit
As the world continues to become more and more digitally connected, access to good connectivity is becoming increasingly important in the everyday activities of consumers, businesses, communities, and public service providers. In the UK, Government ambitions for improving coverage of broadband and mobile services have led to various regulations and policies aimed at making it easier to achieve connectivity, especially in remote rural areas. Coupling this with new developments in technology, we are now at the point where communities really can build their own wide-area, high-bandwidth and cost-effective next-generation networks. Such networks could provide traditional broadband and mobile services for local consumers and business, but they could also be 'private' networks for the local sports ground or football stadium, or a temporary 'pop-up' network for an event or festival, for example.
Enabling digital connectivity in rural areas is challenging though. Suitable locations for mast sites are often difficult to access and it can be difficult to get equipment to them; cable runs (for optical fibre, electrical power, etc.) can be long and expensive to install; customers are sparsely populated and the business case is challenging. But despite such challenges, there is much that communities themselves can do to enable digital connectivity in their areas, and the 5G New Thinking Rural Toolkit aims to provide practical support and guidance on what needs to be done and the approaches for doing it.
Each community is different, of course, with different connectivity requirements and different operating environments, along with different inherent skills and capabilities. You will almost certainly need to engage the services of professional consultants and service providers, but there is much that you can do yourselves!
The tasks and activities required for building digital connectivity solutions are varied and wide-ranging, but they can essentially be grouped into three key high-level categories, which can explore by clicking on the following links:
- Create Your Business Plan
This involves identifying your community's needs and the applications and use cases that the network will need to support, as well as working out the business models and the associated cost/revenue analyses and setting up the community enterprise organization that will secure the funding and finance to build and operate the network and 'run the business' going forward. - Plan and Build Your Network
Your network may include optical fibre runs, radio access networks, point-to-point microwave links, masts and electrical power facilities, all of which needs to be planned and designed. You'll need to consider coverage and capacity requirements, end-user devices, access to radio spectrum, access to mast sites and associated planning consent, network security, etc, etc. - Operate Your Network and 'Run Your Business'
Once you've got the business plan defined and the network built, you're ready to start preparing for the operation of the network and running the business.
As you might expect, there is considerable interdependency between the tasks and activities contained within these high-level categories, and the process of setting up and running your network and service provision business will involve a considerable amount of iteration and refinement as you progress towards realizing your connectivity solution.
Other Useful Information
In addition to the above links which provide guidance on planning, building, and operating your network and the associated business, you might also find the following information useful:
- UK 5G Projects, Testbeds and Trials - What's happened so far
ZZZ Something had changed in just the last few years, - you really can build your own wide area, high bandwidth and cost-effective mobile, wireless and broadband networks. Why on earth would you want to do that, and of course how would you do that, what might it cost, and who do you need to help -it's do-able, but not that easy (yet!)? In this section to build your confidence we summarise and link to some of the exciting UK projects using new 5G (and indeed 4G and Wifi) technology to self-provision connectivity (where perhaps there was none!).
- Case Studies: ZZZ
- 5G and Public Health: ZZZ
A note on finding your way around the Toolkit...
You can find your way around the Toolkit by clicking on the sidebar menu symbol in the top left corner of each page. The sidebar will then appear with a list of all of the pages contained in the Toolkit, and you can click on any of these to take you to corresponding page.