INVITATION TO TENDER FOR THE DESIGN AND BUILD OF A 5G NETWORK IN BASING VIEW, BASINGSTOKE

As part of its economic growth and digital innovation agenda, Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council ("the Council") was looking to work with the private sector on the design and build of a 5G network in Basing View, Basingstoke's central business district.

The council's ambition was to create a comprehensive 5G ecosystem focused on commercialisation where businesses will be able to access 5G connectivity to develop, trial and bring to market new products, services and applications. The project is supported by the Enterprise M3 Local Enterprise Partnership and the University of Surrey 5G Innovation Centre.

This project is seen as the start of Basingstoke's 5G journey and the 5g Living Lab shall be located in Basing View, the town's central business district, which is home to over 100 companies mostly from the professional and financial services, digital tech, cybersecurity and life sciences sectors. Both global companies and innovative SMEs have chosen Basing View as their location and the park is undergoing a multi-million pound regeneration to make it the premier town centre business location in the south east.

To enable the delivery of this vision, the council was looking to work with industry partners to design and build a 5G network providing indoor and outdoor connectivity in Basing View and deploy 5G services to include: a core network within one building at the eastern end of the park, outside to the extent of Lower Basing View and to selected rooms within nearby buildings via rooftop, Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) distribution (locations to be confirmed following design).

The work is to be split into two key stages:

1. Design of the network
2. Build and install of the network as per the approved design and consisting of a 5G core network and a Radio Access Network, operating in a Stand Alone mode.

The project will be on a public/private partnership basis aiming to achieve mutual benefit and funded by direct investment from the public and private sector with the Council providing 50% of the funding, this being capped at £1.25million, which will be provided to the successful Tenderer to cover capital costs at the build and install stage.

The 5G Living Lab project could act as a demonstrator for industry partners to showcase technology, expertise and development capabilities and could also help foster innovation by providing a range of use cases including smart city and Internet of Things applications, immersive retail and leisure, AR and VR, mobility and transport and digital health. Through its strong focus on commercialisation and business engagement, the project can also give access to innovative start-ups and businesses helping to develop further 5G innovation and capabilities.

Following the design and build phase of the 5G network, ownership and on-going maintenance and upgrades of the network will remain with the industry partners. This will provide on-going monetisation and commercialisation opportunities for the private sector partners to generate income from the network to ensure its longer-term sustainability.

The Council is utilised an electronic tendering tool to manage this procurement and communicate with Tenderers. Accordingly, there was no hard copy documents issued to Tenderers and all communications with the Council, including the submission of Tenderers' Responses, was conducted via the ProContract system, which can be accessed using the following link:

http://sebp.due-north.com

To access the full tender documents please register on ProContract and submit expressions of interest on this opportunity, reference DN558434.

Completed tenders and supporting information should be returned via ProContract no later than 12:00:00 (Midday) Friday 27th August 2021.