According to the GSA, nearly 800 private networks are deployed worldwide. More than 15% are in manufacturing, with education, mining, and power utilities following in frequency. In addition, we’ve all read about deployments in agriculture, seaports, and warehouses. Use cases are constantly growing in these verticals, many including high-speed, low-latency, and IoT. These are common use cases – or as common as private networks can be today. But what are the uncommon use cases for private networks? What unusual and innovative applications have people found for private LTE and 5G networks? What functionality has someone thought of that truly makes us say, “That is great.”? Without further ado, here are my top four choices for worldwide Coolest Private Network Application.
The most recent entry on the list starts us off in fourth place. Naver, a South Korean conglomerate, working with Samsung and Naver Cloud, are deploying Korea’s first private 5G network in their new Seongnam headquarters. They have 40 autonomous robots on three floors, with plans to expand to hundreds of robots over all 36 levels later this year. These robots are employee assistants, delivering papers, packages, food, and drinks to workers. Without built-in intelligence, the robots are controlled through the cloud on 4.7 GHz and 28 GHz bands. Digital twins and AI help the robots learn their way around the building.
The bronze medal is found in the remote forests of British Columbia, Canada, where 60% of forestry operations don’t have cell coverage. Some have satellite phones, but they don’t provide the desired throughput or reliability. Cell coverage could provide service to workers in remote camps and native communities who live in isolated areas, increase worker safety and provide the coverage necessary for IoT applications. FPInnovations, a not-for-profit organization that works on technical solutions to support Canada’s forest sector, is working with Tolko Industries, Tsi Del Del Enterprises, and San Jose Logging Ltd to bring high-speed internet to the forest. Tests have successfully been run with a fixed tower providing LTE coverage and satellite access for backhaul. The satellite, which is currently fixed, will soon be mobile, allowing the tower to move as well, providing coverage and capacity where needed.
Second place and the silver medal can be found in Florida, USA, where sinkholes are being monitored by a company using a private LTE network. Sinkholes are a significant problem in Florida due to its ground composition, and past sinkhole appearances have enveloped people, destroyed homes, and let contaminated water into an aquifer. Communication Technology Services (CTS) and MicroSeismic have created a CBRS-based LTE network to provide sinkhole detection for an industrial plant. The network will cost-effectively relay seismic data gathered from acoustic sensors, allowing for a more rapid response when significant ground shifting is detected.
The gold medal for Coolest Private Network Application is in Sydney, Australia. The University of Technology Sydney (UTS), with Nokia, has developed a private 5G wireless network with a digital microbrewery. UTS’ Industry 4.0 Nano-Brewery has a digital twin in the cloud and a physical twin at Technical University (TU) in Dortmund, Germany. The digital twin can not only monitor the production 24/7 in Germany, gathering detailed data about every step (e.g., mashing, boiling, fermenting) in the beer-making process, but can often fix problems without human intervention.
To sum up, we have office robots in Korea, forestry service in Canada, sinkhole detection in the US, and a microbrewery in Australia on our list of cool and innovative applications being run on private LTE and 5G wireless networks. What’s next? Will we see a popcorn factory gathering data on the number of popped kernels or an auto race delivering millisecond updates on car and driver conditions? How about coverage at research stations in Antarctica? More likely, it will be an application that few of us had even considered. Like most of you, I am anxious to find out.
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