VIAVI Joins ORBIT Consortium to Bring Digital Twin Technology to Private 5G on Blackpool's Trams and Buses

RAN digital twin modeling to plan and validate multi-vendor Open RAN deployment in a live public transport environment

CHANDLER, Ariz., Nov. 10, 2026 — VIAVI Solutions Inc. (VIAVI) (NASDAQ: VIAV) has announced its participation in ORBIT (Orchestrated mobile Network for Blackpool intelligent transport), a collaborative project funded by the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and Innovate UK. With a total project budget of approximately $4.15 million, ORBIT will integrate and assure a standalone non-public 5G network (SNPN) across Blackpool's tramway and bus network.

Private 5G is increasingly recognized as essential to safer, more resilient transport, but operators face fragmented vendor ecosystems and limited evidence that multi-vendor Open RAN components will perform together as a complete, procurable system. ORBIT addresses this system-level gap, focusing on integration and assurance. Use cases include live CCTV streaming for incident management, multimedia delivery to onboard screens and a network slice for operational technology communications.

VIAVI's Network Digital Twin based on the TeraVM AI RAN Scenario Generator (AI RSG) will model Blackpool's tram and bus routes, enabling control routines to be refined and tested against highly realistic traffic scenarios ahead of field trials. This approach helps validate performance, resilience and energy efficiency at system level, reducing technical risk and integration overhead before equipment reaches the street.

"The same approach to validating connectivity and AI-driven control before live deployment can be applied beyond ORBIT to other critical, distributed assets such as utilities, airports, ports, advanced manufacturing sites and other nationally significant infrastructure," said Ian Langley, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Wireless, Security and Applications, VIAVI. "ORBIT gives us a live reference case for applying our digital twin capabilities to network deployments across critical sectors to reduce cost and risk."

In this project, VIAVI will work with Blackpool Council, which leads ORBIT, as well as the University of York and Hitachi Rail to deliver live demonstrators on Blackpool trams and buses, interoperability and assurance reports, and a replicable reference architecture to support early market evaluation of assured 5G solutions.

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SOURCE VIAVI Solutions