Nokia launched the 5G Mobile Network Architecture (MoNArch) research project with 14 partners including Huawei, Telecom Italia and Samsung Electronics, which will run for two years and has a budget of €7.7 million.

The programme will focus on using network slicing to enable pre-standard 5G use cases in areas such as healthcare, media and the automotive industry and aims “to bring 5G mobile network architecture from concept to [the] real world”.

“As 5G networks need to simultaneously support various services with different requirements, network slicing will be a crucial aspect of the network architecture, providing flexible and adaptive networks which fulfill the 5G requirements,” Nokia explained in a statement.

5G MoNArch involves mobile network players from UK, Germany, Spain, Greece, Italy, and France with “the technical know-how required to turn the project’s vision into reality” and will include “two real-world test bed implementations”.

It is part of Phase II of the EU-backed 5G Infrastructure Public Private Partnership (5G-PPP). The EC first announced the initiative in December 2013 with plans to invest €700 million by 2020 through the Horizon 2020 programme.

According to Peter Merz, head of end-to-end mobile networks solutions at Nokia Bell Labs: “Nokia is fully committed to the 5G-PPP: we have delivered know-how and innovative technologies since its launch in 2015 in order to strengthen the European 5G footprint.”

Earlier this month Nokia announced plans to broaden its focus “into multiple areas of early 5G mobility use cases”, in response to growing interest in the technology from operators in the US, China, Japan and South Korea and expectations of a 2019 global deployment.