5G Mobile Private Network - PIN for Pre-procurement market engagement

Description

The purpose of this PIN is to advise all interested suppliers of Digital Catapult's intention of a future procurement for 5G Mobile Private Network. Digital Catapult has entered into a 5 year project with other 7 partners to deploy a private 5G network and run a technology and innovation acceleration programme in Northern Ireland. This pre-market engagement and the potential future procurement process specifically relates to a turnkey solution and support until Nov 2026 (or until end of the program) for 5G Mobile Private Network (5G MPN) at two adjacent sites located in Northern Ireland. Through this pre-market engagement process, Digital Catapult seeks to understand the turnkey solutions readily available in the marketplace to meet its current requirements; potential issues and limitations; realistic timescales for the service provision and delivery at Northern Ireland; clear R17 upgrade roadmap. Our intention is to procure a single contractor capable of meeting all our requirements, and a future procurement exercise shall be run in the next months under the Public Contract Regulations 2015. This pre-market engagement will help us to better understand the market and to help with specification and tender documentation development for our future tender. This Prior Information Notice (PIN) is issued solely for the purpose of conducting supplier pre-market engagement. Interested parties will not be prejudiced or advantaged by any response to this document, to the PIN, or by questions raised or lack thereof to them, or attendance to the supplier pre-market engagement event. This PIN does not constitute a call for competition. Lot 1: 5G Mobile Private Network (5G MPN) which is based on the 3GPP standards Release 16 and upgradable to Release 17 during the expected four year (or until Nov 2026) lifetime of the project. For the purpose of this pre-market engagement please consider “5G MPN” is a collection of 5G Core (SA), 4G Core (LTE-M and NB-IoT), 5G NG-RAN (gNB) & 4G RAN (eNB), suitable network infrastructure, security and compute. We are looking for a turnkey solution that includes features and functionalities, key advantages, and anticipated enhancements of their 5G Stand Alone (5GSA) and 4G private network solution. To achieve this, we are looking for a solution provider, who shall design and build indoor 5G and 4G MPN (Mobile Private Network) to be deployed at two sites in Northern Ireland. It is expected to be a commercial grade (with a reference of previous deployment) turnkey solution for 5G and 4G MPN. The solution provider should have to supply all the equipment, software and related services, which include but are not limited to physical installation, commissioning, testing and optimization to meet the agreed technical capabilities along with all necessary documentation and training. Our intention is to procure a single contractor capable of meeting all our requirements, and a future procurement exercise shall be run in the next months under the Public Contract Regulations 2015. Additional information: Full details in regard to this PIN and the planned pre-market engagement can be found on the additional document attached to the PIN notice on www.mytenders.co.uk Interested Suppliers can register their interest, access the document and also ask questions by accessing the PIN notice at www.mytenders.co.uk