Solution Development for Advanced Connectivity Technologies

Overview

This competition supports the development, demonstration and commercialisation of next generation communications technologies that strengthen the UK’s security, resilience, sustainability and long term competitiveness.

Delivered through the Advanced Connectivity Technologies (ACT) programme and funded by DSIT, the competition focuses on building sovereign capability in telecoms infrastructure and accelerating innovation across secure and sustainable networks.

Projects must align to one of three strategic areas and demonstrate a clear route to real-world deployment, commercial adoption and long-term UK impact:

1. Secure and Resilient Networks
2. Sustainable Networks
3. Sovereign Telecoms Components and Applications

Scope

The aim of this competition is to accelerate the development, demonstration and commercialisation of next generation communications technologies that strengthen the UK’s security, resilience, sustainability and long term competitiveness.

The Advanced Connectivity Technology (ACT) R&D Programme aims to accelerate the development, demonstration and commercialisation of next generation communications technologies that strengthen the UK’s security, resilience, sustainability and long term competitiveness.

This CR&D competition invites proposals addressing one of three challenge areas, each aligned to the UK’s overarching ACT Grand Challenges and the Integrated Security Fund funded priority on sovereign telecoms components.

The three challenge areas are:

• Grand Challenge 1: Secure and Resilient Networks
• Grand Challenge 2: Sustainable Networks
• ISF Strategic Focus: Sovereign Telecoms Components and Applications

Across all categories, proposals must demonstrate:

• measurable improvements against relevant performance metrics
• a credible integration route into real world platforms, networks or systems
• a clear pathway to commercial adoption and long term UK strategic impact

Key themes and topics

Projects must focus on one of the three challenge areas:

1. Secure and resilient networks

Projects in this category must contribute to a demonstrable improvement in the security, reliability and robustness of UK connectivity infrastructure.

Projects may include innovations that:

• remain operational during faults, attacks and environmental shocks, including overload conditions caused by direct network attacks, with rapid automated recovery
• embed security, provenance and zero trust principles by design across hardware, software and operations, including full system management and integration
• integrate terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks to provide resilient coverage and failover
• demonstrate spectrum resilience, interference tolerance and secure operation in contested environments
• contribute directly to international standards and position UK developed technologies within global supply chains
• sense current and latent network demand in real time and enable configurable adaptations

2. Sustainable networks

This category supports innovations that enable more energy efficient and spectrum efficient networks.

Projects may include:

• dramatically reduce energy use per bit through system level design, not incremental optimisation
• use spectrum more efficiently and dynamically, including through sharing and adaptive reconfiguration
• integrate renewable energy, demand responsive operation and thermal efficiency at network and site level
• embed circular economy principles, lifecycle measurement and design for reuse and recyclability
• support shared and neutral host infrastructure models that lower cost and environmental impact

3. Sovereign telecoms components and applications R&D

This category focuses on developing sovereign UK capability in critical telecoms hardware and sensing technologies, particularly advanced radio frequency and integrated sensing and communications systems.

Projects should demonstrate components with dual civil and defence applications and support UK telecoms industrial capability.

Projects should address one of the following themes:

Theme A: Assured ISAC systems and integration

• assured ISAC architectures with resilience to interference, spoofing or degradation
• data fusion and correlation across multiple RF and non-RF sources
• integration of ISAC functions into existing capabilities and platforms
• ad hoc and self-forming ISAC networking, particularly where fixed infrastructure is unavailable

Theme B: Advanced RF architectures and components

• reconfigurable antenna arrays that switch between communications and sensing modes
• multifunction RF front ends that reduce platform cost by replacing multiple subsystems
• programmable metasurfaces that adapt beam patterns or spectral behaviour
• adaptive electromagnetic control techniques demonstrated in hardware

Theme C: RF enabled applications with civil pull

• use of ambient RF emissions to support drone or object detection
• RF based tracking to improve safety of vulnerable individuals or assets
• monitoring applications using existing telecoms infrastructure rather than bespoke deployments

Project duration

3 to 24 months

Must start byon 1 September 2026

End by 31 August 2028

Award value

Grant funding request between £200,000 and £5 million

Funding rates

For industrial research projects, purposeful research that builds new knowledge and skills to improve or develop products, processes, or services—often through prototypes or system components that validate ideas in realistic settings, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:

• up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
• up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
• up to 50% if you are a large organisation

For experimental development projects, which use existing knowledge to shape and refine new or improved products, processes, or services—through prototyping, testing, and validation, not routine upgrades and are nearer to market, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:

• up to 45% if you are a micro or small organisation
• up to 35% if you are a medium sized organisation
• up to 25% if you are a large organisation

Research organisations can share up to 30% of the total eligible project costs

Eligibility criteria

• Projects must be collaborative and led by a UK registered organisation (business, RTO, academic, charity, not for profit or public sector)
• Projects must include at least one grant claiming SME
• Collaborators can be a UK registered business of any size; an academic institution; a charity; a not for profit; a public sector organisation; or a research and technology organisation
• Subcontractors must be preferably UK-based with fully justified and appropriate costs
• All funded project work must be carried out within the UK (except non-funded international partners)
• Organisations must intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
• Subsidy control and state aid rules apply under the Research, Development and Innovation Streamlined Scheme