Rogers Communications and the University of British Columbia (UBC) have switched on Canada's first 5G-powered smart campus, involving 5G base stations throughout UBC's Point Grey campus and an edge computing enabled data centre, which will be used by university researchers to test 5G applications in a real-world setting. Rogers' CTO Jorge Fernandes said: 'Our work with UBC is helping design and test Canada's 5G blueprint and today's announcement is a critical milestone as we prepare our national network for commercial deployment in 2020.' New research projects using the 5G campus network include: earthquake and tsunami early detection (leveraging low latency 5G networking of sensors and machine learning); digital mining technology using autonomous trucks; and 5G Mobility as a Service (MaaS), a next generation mobile platform that brings together public transit, bike rental, car sharing, car rental and other modes of transportation.
Rogers is partnering Ericsson to upgrade and densify its fibre-powered national network with 5G-ready technology as it prepares for commercial deployment of 5G in 2020, and it continues to test 5G in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver.