CENGN, the Canadian Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks (NGN), a consortium of industry, academic and research partners supporting the commercialisation of network products, applications and services, announced that it was identified in the recent Ontario 2017 budget as a key player in the Ontario government’s 5G technology initiative.
CENGN stated that it has a record of helping to accelerate the commercialisation of technology developed by Canadian SMEs federal with the support of funding provided by the Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) and the support of its members.
The newly announced financial support to be provided by the government of Ontario will help enable greater collaboration between industry, academic, research and government bodies in key areas of NGN, software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualisation (NFV) across the province.
The Ontario budget specifically identifies 5G as constituting the backbone of future networking technologies, and the government plans to invest C$63 million over five years in CENGN’s Cloud Expansion Project. The CENGN Cloud will connect 18 innovation centres across Ontario that support key industries, as well as providing SMEs with new advanced networking capabilities.
The CENGN cloud project is designed to support the development and availability of next-generation networks and the digital economy industries that utilise these networks. The initiative is expected to help companies address key opportunities in fields such as autonomous vehicles (AV), aerospace, public safety, cybersecurity, ICT, mining, eHealth, smart agriculture and broadband Internet architectures, particularly for rural and remote users.
Canada’s CENGN is an NCE funded Centre of Excellence for Commercialisation and Research (CECR) that aims to accelerate the commercialisation of next generation communications solutions. The consortium’s data centre runs a production OpenStack environment with multiple connections, including a 100 Gbit/s-enabled dark fibre link. CENGN offers services including proof of concept validation, interoperability and certification testing and technical training.
CENGN industry members include: Cisco, EXFO, GENBAND, Fujitsu, Invest Ottawa, Juniper, Nokia, Rogers, TELUS, Viavi, Wind River and Zayo Canada.
