About the competition
Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will invest up to £18.5 million in this competition. This is subject to a sufficient number of high quality applications being received.
The aim of this competition is to overcome the system level integration gap that prevents high-value UK advanced connectivity components from forming complete, procurable solutions.
Your project must accelerate the market availability of assured 5G SNPN solutions, that improves system security, resilience, performance, or energy efficiency. As a result, strengthening UK systems integration capability and deliver outputs with a credible route to market.
For the purposes of this competition, system level integration refers to the non-recurring engineering work, interoperability testing, and verification required to combine multi-vendor Core, RAN, and supporting hardware or software components. This moves towards a coherent, secure, and operable connectivity system that can be procured as a complete solution.
We want to fund CR&D projects that enable the integration of UK-anchored advanced connectivity components at a system level into technically assured, end-to-end architectures ready for early market evaluation.
Your proposal must:
- integrate TRL (4–7) UK-anchored advanced connectivity technologies and components towards a defined end-to-end system architecture
- demonstrate secure multi-vendor interoperability across Core, RAN, and hardware or software layers
- fund and deliver system level integration and assurance activity, rather than component development alone
- generate technical evidence, including reference architectures and performance and security reports
- demonstrate relevance of the project for end users and adopter stakeholders to ensure market alignment.
This competition prioritises rapid system integration and technical assurance, rather than deployment or large-scale adoption. It is intentionally time-bound and evidence-driven, generating outputs that will inform future policy, investment, and scale-up decisions without pre-committing to subsequent phases.
Read more about the available funding (closing date 1 April 2026).
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