Network equipment vendor HFR has said it will supply a “converged private 5G and Wi-Fi 6E network” for a new industrial complex “in the metaverse” at the Kyungnam Techno-Park in the coastal city of Changwon in the southeast of South Korea. The Kyungnam/Changwon development is looking to make deliberate usage of digital twin technology – hence the metaverse conflation – to create an “inch-by-inch” virtual model of the site, plus operations, services, machines, and other ‘things’.
South Korea-based HFR said the new self-developed 5G-and-Wi-Fi network will be used for manufacturing purposes within an “aviation industrial complex” at the Kyungnam Techno-Park, located in a Korean Free Economic Zones (KFEZ); specifically it said it will support an “aircraft manufacturing collaboration system” – which sounds, at least, like a digital twin of an aircraft manufacturing operation offering lifecycle management and systems optimisation.
It stated: “These applications and the network help to expand business platforms and advanced value chain collaboration for companies across the industrial complex. Through this project, member companies of the Aviation Industrial Complex are improving productivity by utilizing a differentiated wireless infrastructure, including both private 5G and Wi-Fi 6E networks for aircraft manufacturing improvements.”
The company’s my5G-branded private wireless solution, pitched for manufacturing, plus healthcare and hospitality, is billed as a “pre-integrated 5G management platform” featuring a standalone (SA) core and radio access network (RAN) for enterprises. Its (rephrased) marketing claims “commercial off-the-shelf… system configuration, on-premise self-installation with low cap-ex”
HFR has delivered a proof-of-concept already in the Changwon KFEZ already to demonstrate how new-generation cellular and Wi-Fi, in a privately managed and owned setup, might “facilitate the digital transformation of companies in the industrial zone”. It said its goal is that the “additional infrastructure for the metaverse-based industrial… project serve as the foundation for the metaverse ecosystem for the manufacturing industry in South Korea.”
Cho Beom-Geun, head of the company’s product and service division, commented: “Private 5G is extremely important [for] the manufacturing industry to implement metaverse apps [for] Industry 4.0… to achieve drastic improvements in overall productivity. HFR, as a digital innovation partner of small and medium-sized enterprises and public institutions, will make significant contributions towards manufacturing innovation in the Kyungnam complex.”
