5G project gets $400M for grants, infrastructure and research centres

OTTAWA — A public-private partnership to foster 5G technology research in Ontario and Quebec will receive funding to the tune of $400 million over the next five years, according to an announcement Monday. The federal, Quebec and Ontario governments, as well as five global communications companies, will contribute funds that will be administered by the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) in Ontario, and Centre facilitant la recherche et l’innovation dans les organisations (CEFRIO) and Prompt in Quebec. Andrew Robertson, manager of media relations at the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE), said in an email that part of the money will go to develop research centres based in both provinces where small and medium enterprises will be able to share work and office space, perform research, apply for grants as well as gain access to 5G network infrastructure and expertise to develop their 5G-related products. According to Robertson, the five companies — Ericsson AB, Ciena Inc., CGI Group Inc., Thales SA’s Canada division, and IBM Corp.’s Canada division — will provide distinct contributions to the partnership. Ericsson, Ciena and IBM will contribute to the project by developing and building 5G wired and wireless infrastructure. Thales and CGI committed to use the features of 5G to deploy sensors for transit applications and augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) products for smart grids, respectively. Each will bring their particular expertise to support businesses, Ericsson and Ciena's infrastructure will be found in the research centres, and the end result will be the creation of a platform called the ENCQOR 5G test bed, according to Robertson. Monday’s announcement didn’t offer much detail about those research centres, including how many there will be, whether they will be new facilities or existing ones, where they will be located or what their specific function will be. Guillaume Ducharme, vice-president of communications and corporate affairs at CEFRIO, told The Wire Report that he couldn’t provide those details at this time. We do know they will be located across a 1,000 km corridor stretching from London, Ont. to Quebec City. The region was selected for 5G development in Oct. 2016, according to a memorandum of understanding by the Premier of Ontario. Tim Kostyniuk, senior director of digital economy technologies at OCE explained to the Wire Report in a telephone interview that the project is a “pre-commercial 5G testbed that enables small and medium companies in Ontario to innovate at leading-edge applications and to be able to develop their applications and export them to the world.” Smaller companies working on creating products which will need 5G infrastructure to come to fruition will be able to apply for grants funded by the private-public partnership and then connect to the projects’ networks and other technology to test and validate the projects, he said. Kostyniuk said that the project will get up and running in fall of this year. The small and medium companies will also get access to technological and business expertise from the five “anchor” companies and the entrepreneurial knowledge of the OCE to help them scale up, he said. “Tens of millions of that funding is going to go right to ” said Kostyniuk. “It'll provide export development opportunities for them to be able to connect with markets in other geographies to sell their solutions.” Post-secondary institutions will also get involved, with some of funding going towards collaboration between the five anchor companies and 5G-related academic projects across Ontario, according to Kostyniuk. “The fact that you have a project like ENCQOR, that has five multinationals collaborating together with local companies and universities, helps strengthen Canada into an ecosystem that in my opinion is world class,” said Ericsson Canada’s head of research and innovation, Pierre Boucher in an interview at the announcement event. “It puts us on the map internationally.” — With reporting by Bryson Masse at bmasse@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

5G project gets $400M for grants, infrastructure and research centres

News | March 20, 2018

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5G project gets $400M for grants, infrastructure and research centres

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