Aerix-led MOSAIC-5G won Innovate UK backing for an 18-month, £4.3 million private 5G integration project. The program will run from August 2026 to January 2028 and carries more than £3.1 million in grant funding.
MOSAIC-5G stands for Multi-vendor Open System Architecture for Integrated Connectivity. The consortium says the work is meant to show how private 5G can be deployed and managed as one integrated system rather than as a set of separate vendor parts.
What the consortium is building
The group includes Aerix, Antevia Networks, Spry Fox Networks, Noema Signal Labs, Attocore, RANsemi, Liverpool 5G and Bath & North East Somerset Council. Their plan is to combine Antevia’s UK Sovereign 5G SHIFT Private Network, AttoCore’s 5G core and Aerix’s management and service assurance platform into a standalone private network.
The project also brings in Antevia’s iConn unified management platform with AI-agent network operations, Spry Fox Networks’ QuantumPath service assurance, AttoCore’s 5G core with edge break-out and RANsemi’s acceleration hardware. Noema Signal Labs’ NL-COMM signal-processing framework is part of the build as well, with claims of more than 100% gains in spectral efficiency and support for 300%+ more connected devices at the same quality of service.
How the trials will be staged
The integrated system will be tested at three sites: a live industrial robotics field trial with Extend Robotics, Aerix’s live 18-cell outdoor 5G network in Bath operated with Bath & North East Somerset Council, and Digital Catapult’s lab in London.
That setup gives the consortium three different environments to validate the same architecture, from industrial robotics to an outdoor municipal deployment and a lab setting.
Read for private 5G buyers and integrators
The disclosed terms give private 5G buyers a concrete benchmark: an 18-month, £4.3 million program with more than £3.1 million in Innovate UK funding. They also show which functions the consortium is trying to combine into one architecture, including management, core, service assurance and radio acceleration.
For integrators, the project is a reminder that the commercial argument is still about stitching together vendor components and proving they can be run as a package, not about a finished product category.
What the project leads are saying
Dr Peter Gradwell, CEO of Aerix and project lead, said MOSAIC-5G will prove that UK technology can deliver a complete, sovereign, multi-vendor network that goes live in hours and is managed from one screen. Simon Cosgrove, CEO of Antevia Networks, said private 5G will only achieve widespread adoption when it becomes as straightforward to deploy and operate as other enterprise infrastructure.
Cosgrove also said MOSAIC-5G is an important step toward that goal and aims to remove the complexities traditionally associated with private cellular.