Finnish telecoms vendor Nokia has partnered with Norway-based system integrator NetNordic to strike an eight-year supply deal with energy company Equinor to deploy private 4G and 5G networks across its global oil, gas, and wind production plants. Equinor is to manage the installations. There was no word whether the supply deal (or parts of it) is exclusive.
Equinor, headquartered in Stavanger, in Norway, is to install private LTE at two wind farms in the UK this summer. It will roll the system out across its international operations from there. Equinor operates in 30 countries; there is no mention of how many will take the Nokia solution, in conjunction with NetNordic.
The two UK wind farms are off the coast from Dudgeon and Sheringham in Norfolk. Both systems will be operated by Equinor. Nokia said the new LTE deployments, which use its plug-and-play ‘digital automation cloud’ (DAC) product, will support “collaboration between teams” across Equinor’s sites.
NetNordic cited usage for maintenance and safety, including support for drone communications. The LTE deployments are upgradeable to 5G. The DAC solution includes a range of access points for indoor and outdoor coverage, and an edge solution with packet core and application framework for edge computing. It also covers industrial devices.
Jarl Øverby, chief executive at NetNordic Group, commented: “We are able to deliver the secure, smart, offshore wireless digital fabric that Equinor can use to support its communication and maintenance activities and safety objectives. This includes the flexibility to employ a wide range of integrated applications, including team comms and drone networks, and the capability to deploy them to the edge.”
Raghav Saghal, president of Nokia’s cloud and network services division, said: “Equinor is one of the most forward looking energy companies in the world, with a growing wind and renewables business and impressive sustainability targets for its oil and gas production.”
Nokia said it has deployed “mission-critical networks” to over 1,550 customers in the energy, transportation, large enterprise, manufacturing, webscale, and public sector segments. It said it has more than 290 large enterprise customers deploying private LTE networks, with 40 also incorporating 5G into the bargain.
