Verizon has opened a 5G Lab and production studio in London – the company’s first 5G-enabled facility outside the United States.

The lab is based at Verizon’s Mid City Place office in central London, and offers a 5G-enabled environment where organisations can develop and test applications and experiences.

The US telecoms giant is inviting startups, academics and enterprises to work on potential use cases like how autonomous vehicles, smart communities, virtual healthcare, the industrial Internet of Things, immersive education, augmented and virtual reality and responsive gaming can be enhanced with 5G speeds, bandwidth and low latency.

The lab will showcase a selection of 5G-enabled use cases, including a mobile command centre, an augmented shopping experience with smart retail shelving, intelligent asset management and augmented reality-enabled workspace reimagining.

In April, Verizon will also open a 5G-enabled production studio in London, 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 facilities like volumetric and motion capture.

It will feature an incubator space for innovative creative companies to test and learn about how they can build content that benefits from its capabilities to transmit massive amounts of data almost instantaneously.

Toby Redshaw, Verizon Business Group’s vice president of innovation, commented: “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.”

Verizon already operates 5G Labs in the United States in New York, Washington DC, Cambridge, San Jose and Los Angeles. It also opened a 5G First Responder Lab within its Washington DC facility, and a 5G e-sports training facility within its Los Angeles facility.

Mark Melling, head of RYOT Studio and 5G EMEA at Verizon Media, said: “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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