TUBR Celebrates Success At Being Included In New 5G Project

TUBR, which utilises technology to predict people movement, is among a small number of companies picked to take part in the 5PRING project. The scheme aims to improve rider experience on public transportation across England and provides startups with a 5G testbed to improve and grow their solutions and offers participants the opportunity to work alongside industry leaders.

The scheme is being sponsored by Transport for West Midlands and HS2 and has been coordinated by communications giant Wayra.

Commenting on the success, TUBR’s Co-Founder, Dash Tabor, said: “The work Wayra is doing is important to driving innovation. As a startup we often want the opportunity to try new and innovative technologies and Wayra is making this possible. We are excited to have the ability to work so closely with so many industry experts and believe this will help take us to the next level in our evolution as a business.”

5PRING is an open innovation platform that works with start-ups, enterprise organisations, sector experts and technology providers to transform the way people live and do business by leveraging 5G capabilities. It is currently working with local authorities in the West Midlands’ to launch a smart cities challenge. The challenge is focusing on health and social care; public services; social events and public safety.

Businesses picked to take part were asked to present solutions and ideas to one or more of the challenge areas, including: driving efficiency of public services such as rubbish collection and road monitoring; supporting the resurgence of the high-street using digital experiences; journey planning and improving public safety.

TUBR will now be able to utilise the latest technology via a private 5G network at the University of Wolverhampton Science Park. And they will have access to a tailored acceleration programme, as well as coaching, mentoring and expertise provided by experts from the seven West Midlands’ local authorities and the 5PRING consortium members Telefonica UK (O2), Deloitte, Wayra and Digital Catapult.

Companies will be able to take advantage of Wayra’s investor network and start-up offers, a combined consortium customer network and business development with corporate firms. Commenting on the importance of utilising 5G, Ms Tabor added: “5G will be a real game changer in helping to provide more accurate data about passenger numbers. “Up until now we’ve analysed event data to better predict how changes in an area, like weather and traffic can impact your public transport journey.

“But 5G will take the surprises out of changes in behaviour and provide a better understanding of what is happening in an area. It creates a more unified platform that collects and manages additional data points from smart devices. This then allows us to predict more accurately the changes in passenger footfall in any area.”

Ms Tabor said this spectrum “allows for higher accuracy in understanding that a change is happening in real time”.

She added: “As a result we now plan to use 5G to improve public transportation predictions so each minute of travel can be realised. Currently, we make predictions for public transportation based on 20% of data that arrives over an hour after the event occurred.

“5G will provide near real time data collecting meaning we’re updating the view into the future faster than ever before.  We’ve also seen how 5G can handle greater bandwidth meaning you don’t lose your network access and we can keep feeding you those real time glances into the future. We live in a fast-paced society and 5G will transfer life impacting data in near real time so you’re always getting the most valuable insight.”

5G is revolutionising the way we live, work and play and is predicted to dramatically improve the way we move through our environment. “

Previous reports have forecast that reduced congestion through 5G-enabled transport systems could cut commute times by 10 per cent, save £880 million a year in lost productivity and reduce CO2 emissions by 370,000 metric tonnes.

The average driving commuter currently spends 32 hours a year in traffic, according to the Centre for Economics & Business Research data. Train cancellations or delays resulting in employee lateness or absence cost the UK economy £10 billion per year in lost productivity, with 38% of cancellations or delays caused by asset maintenance according to Network Rail. Studies were carried out at the end of 2019 into 5G’s impact on transport systems. But a lot of this work was paused due to Covid-19 and is expected to resume next year.