Inauguration of Thinx | 5GBarcelona, an open laboratory for testing 5G technologies
5GBarcelona is a public-private partnership that constitutes a neutral, open hub for the testing and roll-out of 5G technology and applications in a real city environment. It is sponsored by the Government of Catalonia, Barcelona City Council, the Mobile World Capital Barcelona Foundation, the i2CAT Foundation, the Telecommunications Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTTC), Atos and the UPC.
5GBarcelona aims to transform Barcelona’s metropolitan area into a leading 5G innovation laboratory with an open experimental structure for testing, creating prototypes and implementing new digital solutions.
The initiative 5GBarcelona and Telefónica have inaugurated their Thinx | 5GBarcelona laboratory, a facility at startups, SMEs and corporations and designed to test and validate new services and applications with 5G technology.
Oct 16, 2018
The laboratory was created with the aim of converting Barcelona into one of the 5G digital innovation hubs in Europe. This unique test bench in Catalonia will also act as a product accelerator, providing the technical support and transfer of know-how on two 5G technologies: LTEM and Narrowband IoT. These technologies have particularly important advanced capacities for the industry, such as lower battery consumption and reinforced indoor range, and support a higher density of connected objects.
Other goals of the laboratory include supporting and monitoring pilot research projects based on 5G technology, increasing the attraction of talent in the field of new technologies, being a driving force for development and making new technologies more approachable to develop the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Barcelona and, as a result, throughout Catalonia.The laboratory is therefore a coworking acceleration centre that also provides technical support and know-how.
Differential value
The Thinx | 5GBarcelona offers an advanced environment that, a year in advance, reproduces technologies and the telecommunications networks in which business will have to operate. Testing on this type of environment involves a direct reduction in the time it takes for prototypes to reach the market and is also an opportunity to simulate specific atmospheric conditions in order to test under conditions of low range, or test how batteries behave in one environment or another.
Success of the first pilot test
The startup EnGiDi is the first to try the Thinx | 5GBarcelona facility, where it has tested its device aimed at improving the occupational safety of employees at sites and large infrastructures by monitoring their movements in real time.
Testing showed that EnGiDi is capable of measuring the thermal stress to which employees are exposed, providing the height at which the operator is located and informing of any falls that might occur while the work is being performed, among other variables. All this information, with interaction with 5G networks, can be collected in real time to monitor a large number of employees.