The University of Liverpool in the UK will spearhead an innovative project that aims to tackle the challenge of poor digital connectivity in places where there is high user demand such as busy railway stations, football matches or large concert venues.
The Liverpool City Region High Demand Density (Liverpool City Region HDD) project aims to demonstrate the benefits of Open
RAN technology, an emerging telecommunications network architecture, to support large number of users accessing mobile and internet services in
settings such as sports and music venues.
Announced on 14 September, the University of Liverpool-led collaborative project, which involves the
Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and a consortium of partners, has been awarded £9 million funding from the Department
of Science, Innovation and Technology.
Open RAN is gaining worldwide interest as a way of enhancing connectivity infrastructure by enabling
low-cost, power efficient and unobtrusive small cells to meet the demands of high-density areas.
The Liverpool City Region HDD
project will initially test the Open RAN technology in a simulated environment before trialling it at five test bed sites
across the Liverpool region, including a mixture of indoor and outdoor sites with a variety of uses, to see
if the new HDD network can easily, safely and securely provide connectivity to high number of users in the same environment.