Custom-machine manufacturer MGA Technologies has engaged Finland-based industrial networking specialist Edzcom, owned by Spanish tower company Cellnex, to deploy a private 5G network from Nokia at its new MGA TechLab 4.0 in Lyon, in France. The network went live in January; new Industry 4.0 use cases and applications will be deployed through the rest of 2022, in partnership with Edzcom and Nokia.
The MGA TechLab 4.0, opened in May 2021 on a 800 square-metre site at the company’s headquarters, is geared to drive innovation in the French healthcare industry, in particular in bio-pharmaceuticals, as well as in the semiconductor business. MGA is offering the site as a co-creation space for French manufacturing companies to test and demo new Industry 4.0 tech.
It has flagged new work with partners in mobile robotics, advanced mechatronics, private 5G, industrial IoT, artificial intelligence (AI), and sundry digital twin, human-machine interface (HMI), and augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) applications. The new Nokia network uses the 2.8 GHz N38 private band, liberated by regulator ARCEP in the country for private enterprise usage – “for MGA’s exclusive use to build its private industrial network and develop use cases,” it stated.
The company has outlined objectives to “federate and accelerate an industrial ecosystem around 5G”, as well as to “identify and support solution providers in exploring the uses of 5G [and] to demo the use of 5G to our customers and co-construct their deployment roadmaps.” Among the initial use cases, MGA is to connect industrial IoT sensors, equip augmented operators, and test real-time localisation and mobile robotics, it said.
MGA stated: “This network is intended to be collaborative. That is to say open to our partners and customers who wish to test, evaluate, understand and especially create value with these new networks..
Hervé de Malliard, president at MGA, commented: “The partnership with Edzcom and Cellnex France is a great opportunity to create a unique and collaborative innovation platform in the Industry 4.0 and biopharma fields. Edzcom’s expertise in private networks has been an essential asset behind the development of the first 5G Lab in France… It will allow us to inspire the forerunners of these new technologies.”
