Sunrise and Huawei open 5G Innovation Center in Greater Zurich

Two telecommunications firms, Sunrise and Huawei, have joined forces to open “the first 5G Innovation Center in Europe”, as outlined in a press release. The aim of the center is to allow the partners to develop and test new 5G applications for private and corporate clients.

The center will also be available via a showroom at Sunrise headquarters in Opfikon. Here, new 5G applications from the fields of smart farming, smart manufacturing and cloud gaming will be presented. One example of an innovative smart farming application is a collar sensor, which can record the rhythmical nature of repeated chewing processes, for example, and thereby detect estrus – perhaps more commonly known as periods when animals are ‘in heat’ – by way of changes in the movement behavior of the animal. In this regard, the optimal insemination timing can be pinpointed.

In addition to the showroom, there will also be an “open lab”. This will be available for external companies to use. Here, they will have the opportunity to test their 5G applications before commercialization in a live end-to-end 5G network under real conditions. For this, Huawei will be providing components such as IoT sensors and end devices for testing purposes.

Olaf Swantee, CEO of Sunrise, commented: “With the opening of the first 5G Innovation Center in Europe, we are taking another important step as a leading provider of 5G services. What we are presenting today helps to demonstrate the enormous potential of 5G applications for both private and corporate clients”.

Adding to Swantee’s comments, Haitao Wang, CEO of Huawei Schweiz stated that: “Our aim is to stimulate the 5G ecosystem in Switzerland by showcasing real 5G applications for corporate and private clients as well as supporting developers in fine-tuning and testing 5G applications. With this Innovation Center, we are driving forwards 5G innovations, which is set to become a key technology over the next decade”.