Augmented reality ecommerce over 5G trial goes live in Spain | Platforms & Technology

Shoppers at La Boqueria market in Barcelona have been trialling a virtual shopping experience using augmented reality that brings together the experience of traditional shopping with ecommerce – all using 5G.

The trial by Catalan telecoms company Parlem Telecom has been designed to give new opportunity for the e-commerce  platforms of traditional shops, as it allows customers who cannot shop physically due to lack of time, remoteness, physical impediments to purchase fresh products  as if they were in the market itself.

The application, called Augmented Reality Personal Shopper, allows virtual shoppers to select in real time from their devices, including PC, tablet, mobile phone specific products from market stalls and obtain additional information about them with augmented reality. The system, which is based on a private 5G network based on edge computing servers that guarantees minimum latency in communications and high-capacity bandwidth, includes the participation of a La Boqueria personal shopper equipped with augmented reality glasses as an intermediary between buyer and seller, who interacts with the stallholders and communicates live with the online shopper via videoconference with ultra-high-definition images. During the shopping process, the virtual user receives an augmented reality interface that the personal shopper is observing with their glasses in La Boqueria.

The initiative in the Barcelona market is the first use case of the 5G Catalonia pilot being run by Red.es, an entity attached to the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation. The pilot is being developed by a joint venture of eight companies led by Cellnex Telecom and the MASMOVIL Group, with the participation of the operator Parlem Telecom, the company specialising in augmented reality for industry, Aumenta Solutions, the engineering company Atos, the consultancy Nae, the technology company Lenovo and the start-up Nearby Computing – spin-off of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. The 5G Catalonia project has a total budget of 5.4 million euros and is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

The 5G demonstration presented today, which took place last week at the Olives Francesc stop in La Boqueria, was made possible thanks to the 5G network designed and deployed by Cellnex Telecom and Lenovo’s edge computing solutions. The network, which is entirely 5G – a concept known as stand-alone – will remain installed in Barcelona after the end of the use case.  Specifically, a radio equipment (5G access cell) has been located in La Boqueria, which receives the signal and transmits it via fibre optics to a facility located in the Municipal Institute of Parks and Gardens of Barcelona, which plays the role of a datacenter and processes the signal to connect to the local Cellnex server located in the same space. As for the Augmented Reality Personal Shopper application, it has been developed by the i2CAT Foundation on behalf of Parlem Telecom as the leading company in this use case in La Boqueria.

Alberto Martínez Lacambra, General Director of Red.espointed out that “5G is a technology with a transformative power that will mark a revolution and is an essential vector in the digitalisation drive envisaged in the Spanish Government’s Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan and is one of the pillars of the Digital Spain 2025 strategy. Today we have seen a clear example of the real impact that the use cases of the 5G Pilot projects will have on our way of life, on the way we move around or shop; without a doubt, a unique opportunity for our cities, our citizens and to improve the productivity of our economy”.

Ernest Pérez-Mas, adds CEO of Parlem Telecom that “Parlem Telecom is proud to lead this first use case of the 5G Catalonia pilot, with which we consolidate our operator’s commitment to technological innovation in the metropolitan area of Barcelona and in Catalonia as a whole. The development of an innovative application with augmented reality in an environment as emblematic as La Boqueria can be a step forward for the e-commerce sector and ensure that local businesses can evolve digitally without losing their identity thanks to the potential of 5G”.

Eduardo Fichmann, Global Director of Innovation and Product Strategy, Cellnex Telecom, pointed out that “the deployment of this stand-alone 5G network in Barcelona, based on a model of neutrality, will facilitate technological progress and digitalisation. Thanks to this network, all mobile operators will be able to offer their services to companies and citizens from a single shared infrastructure equipped with the best technology.

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