The business division of Swiss operator Sunrise, as if to preempt the government’s release of ‘vertical’ spectrum on its home turf at the start of 2024, has announced a couple of private 5G pilot projects as it seeks to ramp-up interest from enterprises in higher-grade Industry 4.0 solutions. The company has joined the bandwagon, the message goes, prompting it to write a blog post about the potential of mobile private networks (MPNs) for local enterprises.
One of the pilots is in a retail store; the other is at an airport. The retail project is at its own shop at its headquarters in Opfikon, near Zurich; the airport-proof is with a third-party IT services company providing tracking and monitoring applications to an unnamed Swiss airport. In the former, Sunrise Business has connected four cameras on a private standalone-5G (5G SA) network to an edge-based server at the shop.
The application, which either embeds an AI engine in the camera or connects to one in the edge server, offers a scan-free sale, where the camera recognises and ‘bags’ each item. Customers are billed automatically on leaving the store, without needing to physically check-out. The network uses Sunrise’s public spectrum in the shop. Sunrise refers to the setup as a ‘campus network’, in line with the description used by Deutsche Telekom in Germany.
The airport project is to provide network support for automation of certain processes, including with asset and baggage tracking and check-in monitoring, as well as to connect camera-equipped drones monitoring traffic about the wider airport facility (heat maps). Sunrise Business said it has an “MPN-on-wheels” product, which the IT services firm it has engaged with can use to test new use cases about the airport.
A statement said its product enables it to “give customers the option of testing MPN in practice without having to invest large sums of money at this stage”. The airport network also uses Sunrise’s public spectrum. Sunrise Business explained in the blog the various private 5G setups: dedicated networks, where all of the network is at the edge; hybrid versions, which share the public core network; and sliced networks, hived off of public airwaves.
It is unclear (but likely) the new networks share the public network core. The blog says: “The possibilities that MPNs give companies to digitise their applications and processes as well as develop new innovative solutions are vast. This is because technologies like machine learning, augmented and virtual reality, IoT, or edge computing have one thing in common – they require a stable network with low latency and high data throughput.
“It’s only when these requirements are met that applications such as digital twins, collaborative robots, autonomous vehicles, process automation, predictive maintenance or virtual training to improve remote maintenance or employee safety become truly scalable.”
