Canada’s Rogers Communications is partnering with the University of British Columbia to turn the educational org’s Vancouver campus into a 5G hub, which will act was a testbed for 5G services.
“5G represents a massive technological transformation that will connect everything in our world from people and machines, to homes and cities. The global race to unlock its potential is underway,” said Joe Natale, president and CEO of Rogers Communications. “Our partnership with UBC will ensure we bring our country and Canadians the very best 5G has to offer.”
Rogers said it will begin deployment of 5G-ready network equipment and infrastructure on the UBC campus starting in early 2019. The partnership will study 5G applications such as monitoring vehicle traffic, autonomous vehicles, machine learning and artificial intelligence, as well as network slicing technology for use in robotics, farming and medical applications.
Related: Rogers Tightens Technology Ties to Comcast
The announcement follows a series of 5G announcements from Rogers, including a deal with vendor Ericsson in April to supply equipment and software.
“With respect to network evolution, we continue to make steady progress on our 5G deployment plan. We assigned key strategic agreements with more to come and plans are underway to deploy thousands of small cells,” Natale told investors in July. “We are working with Ericsson, the 5G North American partner of choice, to densify our network with small and macro cells.”
