The 5GI2 will first focus on the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) and develop pilots for application of technologies including augmented and virtual reality for first responder drone surveillance of hazardous environments and other uses.

The pilots will include step-by-step blueprints of the network, cloud and 5G connectivity requirements – from speed and responsiveness to security and analytics.

As other participants join, the pilots are expected to expand to other industries where 5G will enable societal improvements, such as autonomous driving, smart and connected cities, healthcare and media.

The pilots will also facilitate accessibility and transparency of results, encouraging progress in support of 5G industry standards and validation of new business models.

Ulf Ewaldsson, Chief Strategy and Technology Officer of Ericsson, says, “This program is totally in line with Ericsson’s already established 5G programs, such as 5G for Sweden and 5G for Europe. This collaboration brings together necessary competence from technology providers, industry partners and academia to find sustainable solutions to digitize and transform other industries.”

Peter Marx, Vice President, Advanced Concepts, GE Digital, says: “Industrial companies looking to optimize their assets and operations need connectivity from the edge to the cloud. Connecting those assets to GE’s Predix platform and using the innovations emerging from 5G wireless will help them unlock efficiency, increase manageability and drive sustainability.”

Ion Stoica, Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley and Director of RISELab, says: “We believe 5G will be a key technology that will enable our research in RISELab at UC Berkeley on building systems to provide real-time execution on live data with strong security. In particular, 5G would give us unprecedented flexibility in implementing sophisticated functionality across edge devices, edge clusters and clouds. “