BetaDen founders make the most of 5G access |News

Alumni of Worcestershire technology accelerator BetaDen are singing the praises of the accelerator’s partnership with 5G Testbed as a Service provider nexGworx.

Located at the Malvern Hills Science Park in Worcestershire, nexGworx began life in 2016 as Worcestershire 5G - part of the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) Testbed and Trials research and development project. Following the success of its programmes, it was incorporated as a wholly owned subsidiary of Malvern Hills Science Park (MHSP) in Spring 2021, rebranding as nexGworx and providing 5G ‘Testbed as a Service’ to manufacturers looking to trial products and services over 5G.

Being co-located at MHSP meant collaborating with BetaDen was a natural development, setting BetaDen apart from other accelerators across the country by supporting cohort members to access 5G networks indoor and outdoor networks to test their technologies and develop their understanding of its existing and potential capabilities to shape their services.

Most recently in cohort 5, two companies in particular - Prizsm Technologies and Conigital - have both seen measurable benefits to their businesses as a direct result of the access to nexGworx’ services provided during their time at BetaDen.

Prizsm offers hyper-secure data storage and communications, enabling anyone to easily protect and secure their information within the public cloud. Prizsm’s unique multi-cloud distribution approach enables businesses to retain data safely at all levels of security classification.

Adrian Fern, co-founder & CTO of Prizsm Technologies, says: “Access to the nexGworx 5G Testbed in the Malvern Hills Science Park provided a unique opportunity for experimentation, testing, trials, and proof of our next-generation secure cloud store-and-forward solution, Prizsm EDGE. Support is delivered by a team of experts with years of experience and technology integration skills that proved vital in helping us, Prizsm Technologies - a BetaDen Cohort 4.0 company, to successfully deploy our disaggregation and pseudo-random distribution algorithm in the 5G MEC. The nexGworx 5G team and stakeholders are approachable, knowledgeable, and extremely helpful, and we thank them for their support in maximising this exciting opportunity for us. We have since been able to use the Testbed to demonstrate our technology platform to a number of interested clients.”

Conigital (Connected Digital) is today establishing itself as a key player within the smart mobility marketplace. Founder Don Dhaliwal formed the company in 2015 in response to the everyday problems faced by cities and their citizens: namely the inefficiencies of people and goods movement and the need to reduce costs and carbon footprint in order to create a safer, cleaner, smarter and more sustainable environment.

Conigital has since embarked on their mission to disrupt the transport industry through a vision of greener, more efficient mobility for all, and to create democratised autonomy and AI, in order to empower society by accelerating the introduction of seamless clean travel, providing accessible and integrated automated transport services for all.

Tom Robinson, CTO of Conigital, stated: “Being able to draw on the expertise within BetaDen nexGworx 5G Testbed Cohort, both from a business and technical perspective, has helped us to refine our strategy and approach to growth and productisation, as well as providing introductions to a very supportive supply chain.

“Our own 5G expertise has until recently been limited, however, it has become a core and necessary element of our product solution, enabling our own in-house Remote Monitoring and Tele-Operation system to provide essential support services to our self-driving vehicles when it is required; the expert knowledge from within BetaDen and nexGworx has helped us greatly in ascending the 5G learning curve.”

The development of autonomous vehicles and other connected technologies offer exciting growth opportunities worldwide and, as such, next generation connectivity - including 5G - is a key part of making things happen, so much so Conigital worked with nexGworx outside of BetaDen to undertake additional testing at the Malvern Hills site. Through their investment and collaboration in developing infrastructure and technical expertise, BetaDen, MHSP and nexGworx are ensuring Worcestershire establishes itself at the forefront of these new industries, attracting talent and companies revolutionising their industries, to the region.