FIDAL launches Second Open Call for Beyond 5G Trial Innovators

FIDAL is inviting SMEs, start-ups, research institutes, groups of entrepreneurs, app developers and infrastructure owners to undertake a set of beyond 5G trials in a multitude of domains compatible to the FIDAL ones.

General Objectives

• The overall goal of FIDAL Open Call is to reach two main added values of the project:
  • Involving key actors committed to perform beyond 5G trials in diversified and heterogeneous vertical use cases covering key industrial and societal sectors.
  • Ensuring the support of the needed infrastructure to deploy the proposed field trials.
• The Open Call maximizes the impact and accelerate adoption of FIDAL demonstrating flexibility, user acceptance and technology transfer.
• Through the Open Call, FIDAL ensures wide acceptance and achieve sustainability of its results and fosters the further take-up by inviting innovative use cases belonging to the project verticals or compatible, to tune up the FIDAL experimentation framework and associated products as well as the testbeds and large-scale trial facilities.

Specific Objectives

• FIDAL is giving the opportunity to the applicants of the Open Call two options:
  • Submit single beneficiary proposal for new use case and related  field trials using FIDAL experimentation framework, toolkits and NetApps supported by the existing infrastructures, coming from FIDAL initial Consortium.
  • Submit proposals from groups of collaborating and complementary partners to produce new use cases and perform trials using additional services and testing facilities.
• Under option 2 the applicant may propose the integration of external testbeds implementing new services, besides using FIDAL ones, only if it provides a clear value to the project e.g. access to a large number of users participating in the proposed trial(s). The integration of the testbed will be performed by the applicant and has to be clearly described in the proposed implementation plan.
• FIDAL consortium believes that large projects involving the inclusion of large number of trial users, usage of a significant amount of new datasets, FIDAL services, onboarding of external infrastructure, etc. will provide significant evaluation means.
• FIDAL needs to be open to rapid changes and elicitation of new requirements stemming from the new Use Cases.
• The sub-projects selected during the Open Call will be requested in the contract to provide the following deliverables:
  • Use case requirements
  • Architecture
  • 5G evolved features
  • Key Performance Indicators, including measures data
  • Key Value Indicators, including data and applied metrics
  • Lessons learnt
  • They will be able to freely use these deliverables within and outside the project.
  • All experiments should gain high levels of exposure and visibility.

Funding Information

• FIDAL allocates around € 6,000,000 to provide financial support to the selected applicants divided in two different Open Calls.
• FIDAL allocates for this second Open Call around € 2,000,000. Each of them will run indicatively for a period of 9 months (this indicative period may be changed during the contracting phase) and receive a funding up to €150.000 (under option 1) or €250.000 (under option 2).
• Proposers’ organizations can submit multiple proposals; however, only one proposal per organization might be selected for funding in this Open Call.
• 3 additional prizes of 10.000€ will be awarded to the best Open Call contractors rewarding excellence of trials performance, adoption of the FIDAL framework and KPIs & KVIs production.

Ineligible Funding

• Grants will not be awarded in the event of:
  • Bankruptcy, winding up, court-administered affairs, creditor arrangements, suspended business activities, or other comparable procedures (including procedures that involve persons who have unlimited liability for the applicant’s debts)
  • Noncompliance with social security or tax obligations (including if such noncompliance is committed by persons with unlimited liability for the applicant’s debts)
  • Commission of grave professional misconduct (including if such misconduct is committed by persons who possess powers of representation, decision-making, or control, beneficial owners, or those who are crucial for the award or implementation of the grant)

Eligibility Criteria

• The call for applications is accessible to legal entities located in eligible countries. These entities must be established in the Member States of the European Union or associated countries, following the rules of Horizon Europe. Following the Council Implementing Decision (EU) 2022/2506, as of 16th December 2022, no legal commitments can be signed with Hungarian public interest trusts established under Hungarian Act IX of 2021 or any entity they maintain.
• Applicants must maintain complete independence from project partners, their affiliated entities, and any controlled companies. Institutions, organizations, or other legal entities funded by or affiliated with a FIDAL partner are ineligible.
• FIDAL reserves the right to reject a selected application if any of the aforementioned conditions are not met.

For more information, visit FIDAL.