Sophia Antipolis, 19 March 2019

On Saturday, 16 March, the public was invited to experience musicians perform a fully synchronized concert across venues in Bristol and London.

This unique multi-site live music concert was enabled by ETSI Open Source MANO orchestrating dynamically the 5G network service across the different sites interconnected through low latency and high capacity 5G networks. The audiences had the opportunity to immerse themselves in the world of 5G and experience a three-way distributed music performance showcasing the potential of ultra-low-latency, high bandwidth and full synchronization delivered over 5G networks.

The University of Bristol’s Smart Internet Lab organized the event in Bristol’s ‘We The Curious’ Science centre. It connected musicians in three distinct geographical areas over a 5G network orchestrated by ETSI Open Source MANO. This concert demonstrated the "virtualization" of musicians where a musical event takes place in Bristol with the "missing music talent" being brought in from London.

Musicians included Professor Mischa Dohler, from Kings College London, an internationally recognized 5G researcher and is also an accomplished music composer. Professor Dohler performed a live composition from London’s Guildhall, and over the 5G network was accompanied in real time by musicians based at London’s Digital Catapult. Rita Fernandes played the violin, Ms Noa Dohler performed vocals and Bristol’s ‘We the Curious’ Ms Anneka Sutcliffe was also playing the violin.

The event was part of the ‘5G Smart Futures’ a day of demonstrations and discussions that celebrated the creative and economic potential of the power of 5G. This demonstration was an output of the UK Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) ‘5GUK Testbeds and Trials Programme’ (Phase 1) funded project, ‘5G Smart Tourism’.  

Researchers at the Smart Internet Lab have been actively working with the ETSI OSM community on the creation of a novel and intelligent technology platform which enables automated composition of services across multiple 5G domains. This collaboration crystalized in OSM Release FIVE with the delivery of the OSM WIM Plug-in model, enabling to dynamically interconnect remote sites, and deploy services across them over different transport SDN technologies.

This breakthrough solution allows network operators to provide highly synchronized and low latency services across their high capacity and low throughput networks. This showcase validated the performance of Open Source MANO as 5G service orchestrator through the delivery of music performed by remotely located musicians and proved that the audience experience was exactly the same, as if the musicians were performing in the same venue.