GB-LONDON: UK-Korean 5G Collaboration Specialist Facilitation and Grant Competition

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is exploring the opportunity to work with South Korea on a collaborative 5G testbed and trials project, as part of the wider UK Government's 5G Testbed and Trials Programme.

Through discussions with the Korean Government and Korean's Electronics and Telecommunication Research Institute (ETRI) we are proposing a joint UK-Korea 5G collaboration with a focus on "Infotainment mobile services in rapid transport environments". By this, we mean information and entertainment services (e.g. web browsing, social media, video streaming) provided to passengers in rapidly moving vehicles such as high speed trains or cars on high-speed roads.

The objective of the collaboration is to offer the ability for UK industry, including SMEs, or other organisations to test infotainment services, including possible AR/VR, content or broadcasting solutions, in a rapid transport environments in Korea. DCMS will be offering UK organisations £1.2 million capital grant funding to enable this.

The scope of this Procurement is to secure a UK organisation (the Supplier) who will, through their detailed technical knowledge and their knowledge of and engagement with the wider 5G ecosystem:

1. Facilitate the agreement of a more detailed project scope with counterpart organisations in Korea (The Electronics and Telecommunication Research Institute, (ETRI))

2. Design and run an open, fair and transparent grant competition on behalf of DCMS to award UK organisation/s a grant to deliver high quality benefits to the UK through this collaboration.

Additional information: The contracting authority considers that this contract may be suitable for economic operators that are small or medium enterprises (SMEs). However, any selection of tenderers will be based solely on the criteria set out for the procurement.