Verizon has opened a new 5G Lab and production studio in London – the company’s first 5G-enabled facility outside the US – to support its international business and media customers. The Lab, which is now open for business, is based at Verizon’s Mid City Place office in central London, and offers a live Verizon 5G-enabled environment where organisations can develop and test 5G applications and experiences.

Verizon’s 5G Labs are designed to offer technology innovators a space to grow the 5G ecosystem. Start-ups, academics, companies and organisations work with Verizon in the Labs to explore the boundaries of 5G network technology, co-create new applications and hardware, and rethink what’s possible in a 5G world. The potential use cases include exploring how autonomous vehicles, smart communities, virtual healthcare, smart manufacturing, the industrial Internet of Things, immersive education, augmented and virtual reality and responsive gaming can be enhanced with 5G’s super fast speeds, massive bandwidth and low latency.

Verizon’s London Lab enables the company to share its experience and expertise in 5G-enabled application delivery with companies based outside the US. Organisations visiting the Lab can see existing 5G use cases and experiences in action, and can also work with the Verizon team to develop 5G-enabled applications.

“Verizon has proven expertise in delivering 5G in the US,” said Toby Redshaw, Verizon Business Group’s VP of Innovation. “One of the best ways of unleashing the true possibilities of 5G is getting it into the hands of innovators and visionaries. Our London facility enables our international customers to benefit from this expertise as they look to deploy 5G-enabled applications and experiences.”

The London Lab showcases a selection of 5G-enabled use cases across a number of different verticals, including advertising and entertainment, education, manufacturing, medical, retail, utilities and venues. These include a mobile command center, an augmented shopping experience and smart retail shelving, intelligent asset management and AR-enabled workspace reimagining.

In addition, Verizon will open a 5G-enabled production studio in London in April 2020 to complement the 5G Lab facility. The studio will offer a space where Verizon Media’s owned and operated brands, as well as its partners and customers, can produce premium quality, 3D content including virtual and augmented reality experiences using state-of-the-art facilities like volumetric capture, motion capture and AR broadcast.  It is also 5G-enabled, providing an incubator space for innovative creative companies to test and learn about how they can build content in the future that benefits from its capabilities to transmit massive amounts of data almost instantaneously.

Mark Melling, head of RYOT Studio and 5G EMEA at Verizon Media, said: “Our RYOT 5G Studio in Los Angeles was the first and only 5G production house in the US when it opened last year, and now we are opening a new studio in London, offering all the same incredible next-generation content production facilities.  As we move from a 2D to 3D world of content, we are providing our partners with access to the most cutting-edge technology and the ability to experiment with 5G,  bringing together the best creatives to build world-class experiences now as well as prepare for the new world as this technology grows.”

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