The Coronation of King Charles III, set to take place on May 6 2023, will be the first broadcast in the UK on a public 5G Standalone (5GSA) network.

Telecom provider Vodafone has partnered with broadcaster ITN to dedicate a slice of their public 5GSA network for the broadcast of the coronation, which the company says will enable the swift and secure transfer of the live coronation broadcast coverage from Westminster to ITN’s HQ newsroom on Gray’s Inn Road.

From there it will be shared across the nation and then worldwide.

Network slicing is a new capability enabled by 5GSA, the next generation of 5G, which the UK government recently called the ‘cornerstone of the UK’s digital economy’.

One of its key benefits is that it allows telecoms operators to create separate and isolated networks for different use cases. Each slice can be configured differently and as they are isolated from each other, the performance on one would not impact another.

‘The possibilities with 5GSA are very exciting – AI, autonomous vehicles, holographic calls, IoT and more, 5GSA will turbo-charge the UK’s digital economy and pave the way for our next digital age,’ said Nick Gliddon, Vodafone’s UK business director.

Technology has come a long way since the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Televised by the BBC, it was the first major event to be broadcast internationally.

In the UK alone, over 20million people watched Elizabeth II’s coronation broadcast live on TV. This time around the number is likely to be bigger.

5GSA is a significant development for the broadcasting industry as minimum upload speed threshold can be set to guarantee that digitally dense content is uploaded quickly and reliably for live streaming.

The new technology also removes the risk of network congestion impacting mass events such as the coronation.

As media organisations become increasingly reliant on connectivity networks for outside broadcast, achieving predictable network performance has become essential.

Network slicing gives broadcasters a simpler and quicker alternative to deploying their own private mobile network for video transmission with no extra heavy-duty equipment, planning, back-office or spectrum licensing needed, and it can be accessed all via a SIM card.

In January, Vodafone became the first UK telco to test its 5GSA network for public use. It was tested at Coventry University’s 5GSA Media Innovation Lab that opened earlier this year.

Broadcasters and other media companies have been invited to the lab to develop use cases for the media industry, working alongside engineers and academics.

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