5G, those who make their own private network

Tampere, Southern Finland. From 2020 Sandvika Swedish multinational that manufactures machinery for industry, the mining and manufacturing sectors, sta experimenting with 5G in the mine. The fifth generation mobile networks are used to manage excavations, move precision robots, communicate safely and quickly even with those who are many meters underground. To Antwerp, Belgium, in the same year the 5G gets on board a small pilot, to remotely control the maneuvers of large cargo ships docking at the port. In Swedenon the other hand, with fifth-generation networks, forest cutting machines are driven remotely. These are all common trials in the telecommunications industry, in the face of the boundless capacity for action that 5G makes possible. What’s new is that happen on private networks. Frequencies dedicated to the companies that buy them (or, in this experimental phase, occupy them).

In the old continent, according to the data ofEuropean Commission’s 5G Observatoryare in progress 55 tests on fifth generation mobile private networks. To dominate is the Germany, the only country in the Union to have assigned frequencies specifically for private use. A 100 megahertz (MHz) portion in the 3.7-3.8 gigahertz (GHz) band, offering more bandwidth for critical uses, such as autonomous robotics or logistics. About half of the tests are in the industrial sector, from Bosch to BASF, from Mercedes to Volkswagen.

Why have a private 5G network? Jani Vilenius, director of technology and services at Sandvik mining and rock solutions summarizes it well: “Industrial-grade private 5G networks offer single infrastructures for reliable and secure communications of voice, data and video and automated applications“. “The data remains within the factory and the customer’s network, creating what we believe a more specific security level”Explains Linda Pirovano, technical presales consultant for industrial automation networks of Siemens in Italy. The German manufacturing giant is one of the companies that has been awarded a band spectrum all to itself. In Nuremberg Siemens created a test environment for the automotive sector, with fifth-generation private networks used to move small delivery robots and create virtual test environments.

From ports to forests

There are three main trials that companies are conducting on private networks. First, “the video streaming and data sharing reliably and flexibly“, As Lennart Verstappen, spokesman for thePort Authority of Antwerp. At the beginning of 2020, the port of the Belgian city begins to experiment with 5G. First on a public network, then on a private network. Since in Belgium, unlike in Germany, companies cannot acquire frequencies, the authority works side by side with the telephone companies Orange and Proximus, the telecommunications giant Ericsson and Isea, which develops network solutions. The first tests concern the sharing of data and video from the pilots and the extension to the port of the Minerva public safety network, monitored by police and firefighters. “5G allows us to improve our role – comments Verstappen -. We will be able to collect data anywhere and securely. In this way we will be able to support our colleagues at work with drones and video cameras, sending data in real time to those who carry out inspections“.

The other chapter is theautomation, as Skogforsk, the central research body for forests in Sweden, experiments. “We realized that if we wanted to be able to remotely control a machine, we needed low latency and the ability to transmit large amounts of data, such as 4K video – says Petrus Jönsson, Deputy Director of Operations for the Forest Program -. In the long run, the most important use is remote control, combined with automation, of more than one machine per operator. This would do lower the cost of laborwhich accounts for one third of the total cost of the machine“. In the fall, the organization is ready for a new project, together with Ericsson, the telephone company Telenor and Fujitsu.