In short: The 5G DRIVE project deployed 30 small 4G and 5G radio units across Wales, Scotland, and England to deliver coverage to 31 iconic UK tourist destinations that previously had zero cellular signal. The project used the N32 interface with a Security Edge Protection Proxy (SEPP) to securely integrate private and public networks — a technical first with significant implications for rural connectivity.
Key Takeaways
- 31 tourist not-spots now have cellular coverage — locations across three nations that previously had no signal from any operator now have 5G connectivity
- Small radio units make rural deployment practical — 30 compact units covered 31 sites, demonstrating that 5G infrastructure does not require large mast installations in sensitive landscapes
- N32/SEPP integration enables seamless public-private roaming — visitors connect automatically without needing to join a separate network, solving the usability problem that limits many private network deployments
In a nutshell
The Not-Spot Problem
The UK has some of the most visited natural and heritage landscapes in Europe, yet many of its most iconic destinations have no cellular coverage at all — not weak signal, but no signal. Visitors to remote beaches, mountain viewpoints, heritage sites, and walking trails routinely find themselves entirely disconnected.
This is not merely an inconvenience. Walkers and climbers who get into difficulty cannot call for help; tourism businesses cannot process card payments or offer the digital services visitors expect; and the lack of connectivity reinforces the economic disadvantage that many rural areas already face. Building conventional macro cell towers in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and National Parks faces planning objections, high costs, and inadequate commercial returns — the economics of deploying a full mast to serve a location with high visitor numbers but limited mobile revenue have fundamentally never worked.
What 5G DRIVE Deployed
The 5G DRIVE project, funded through DSIT's Future RAN competition with a budget of £2.9 million, took a different approach. The consortium — comprising VMO2, wavemobile, Cisco, Ori Industries, and the University of Warwick — deployed 30 small 5G radio units across sites in Wales, Scotland, and England. Further details on the VMO2-led trial are available from Mobile UK.
These are not traditional mast installations. The radio units are compact, low-power devices that can be mounted on existing structures — buildings, poles, visitor centre walls — with minimal visual impact. Thirty units across 31 sites means roughly one unit per location, each providing a focused coverage footprint around a specific destination rather than blanketing a wide area, which is an important distinction in planning and environmental terms.
The N32 Interface: Solving the Roaming Problem
The most technically significant aspect of 5G DRIVE is its use of the N32 interface with a Security Edge Protection Proxy (SEPP) to integrate the private 5G network with the public mobile network, and this is worth explaining because it addresses a problem that has plagued previous rural connectivity projects.
Private networks have faced a persistent usability issue: visitors need to know the network exists, actively connect to it, and potentially install an application or obtain credentials. In practice, most people never bother — we have seen this pattern repeatedly with community WiFi and earlier private LTE deployments.
The N32/SEPP approach allows visitors' phones to roam onto the private 5G network automatically, just as they would roam onto a foreign network when travelling abroad. The private network authenticates the user through the SEPP, which provides a secure signalling gateway between the two network domains. From the visitor's perspective, their phone simply has signal where it previously had none. This is a significant technical achievement; the N32 interface is defined in the 5G standards but has seen limited real-world deployment, particularly for private-to-public network integration, and 5G DRIVE demonstrated that it works in practice, with real devices and real users, at multiple sites.
Implications for Rural Connectivity
The UK Government has committed to extending mobile coverage to 95% of the UK landmass by 2030, but the last few percent is disproportionately expensive using traditional approaches. 5G DRIVE demonstrates an alternative model: small, low-impact radio units deployed at specific locations of need, integrated with the public network through standards-based interfaces so that coverage appears seamlessly on visitors' existing devices.
This model could be replicated at hundreds of similar locations across the UK — coastal paths, mountain summits, heritage sites, and rural tourism hubs — at a fraction of the cost of conventional macro deployments. The £2.9 million budget for 31 sites works out at under £100,000 per location, including all network integration and backhaul costs, which is notably cheaper than a single macro mast.
The trade-off is that each unit provides a focused coverage area rather than wide-area blanket coverage, so this approach suits destinations with concentrated visitor footfall rather than long linear routes — but for the specific problem of tourist not-spots, where visitors gather at identifiable points, the model is well matched. For rural communities and tourism economies that have waited years for connectivity that never arrived through conventional means, 5G DRIVE consequently offers a practical and proven alternative.