IT was present at the first meeting of the project "Mobilizador 5G", which took place at the Altice Labs facilities in Aveiro between 8-9 January. Sixty representatives from 14 national academic and industry institutions gathered for the first technical discussions aimed at the design, implementation and validation of a set of national technological products, capable of integrating and providing services within the framework of future 5G networks.

The duration of the project is of 36 months, until the end of 2020, presenting a perfect alignment with the current worldwide development and production schedule for the 5G technology.

Still under development, the 5G technology is expected to go into production in 2020, representing a great technological advance, allowing even faster communications (in speed and response time), reliable and with less energy consumption. It will support a large number of services, including mass and industrial IoT (internet of things), and multimedia with virtual and augmented reality.

In addition to the products to be implemented, the project will create synergies among the entities involved, thus becoming a national and international reference in the promotion of 5G technology and its implementation in Portugal.

The consortium involves the Altice Labs, Altran Portugal, EFACEC Energia, EFACEC Engenharia e Sistemas, INESC TEC, Instituto de Telecomunicações, IT Center, Nokia Solutions and Networks Portugal, One Source, PDM and FC, UBIWHERE, University of Coimbra, TICE.PT and WAVECOM. In addition to these, other entities will do a follow up on the project. These are EDP, Infraestruturas de Portugal, MEO, Porto de Aveiro and VIATEL.

The project is part of the "Programas Mobilizadores" and is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Portugal 2020 Program for an amount of more than 6 million euros.