Hutchison Ports has launched one of the UK’s largest private 5G networks across Felixstowe and Harwich ports, enabling autonomous vehicles and advanced IoT, amid a global surge in port digitisation. Three Group Solutions and Boldyn Networks steered the project into port. Meanwhile, global momentum builds with a major first at the Port of Beira in Mozambique.
In sum – what to know:
“One of the largest” – a major wide-area private 5G network covering the ports of Felixstowe and Harwich in the UK, separated by a stretch of water, will boost automation.
Autonomous vehicles – the new 5G setup supports autonomous trucks, semi-autonomous quay cranes and gantry cranes, plus sundry IoT and digital twin tech.
Docking everywhere – the global ports sector is moving fast with 5G, suddenly, with new deployments at the UK’s Thames Freeport and Mozambique’s Port of Beira.
Hutchison Ports has completed the roll-out of a single wide-area private 5G network across the port of Felixstowe and Harwich in the UK, covering logistics and ferry terminals either side of the river mouth dividing the counties of Suffolk and Essex. Three Group Solutions, another CK Hutchison subsidiary, handled the deployment, alongside shared network specialist Boldyn Networks. Hutchison Ports called it “one of the UK’s largest private 5G networks”. It cited “fully autonomous operational vehicles and equipment” as the primary use cases, with “new technologies” to come. Three Group Solutions has provided more detail previously about the types of IoT apps the port is considering.
The news, which builds on a three-year old private 5G proof-of-concept project, as well as a five-year old private 4G/LTE setup, follows a burst of private 5G activity in UK port logistics, and related North Sea operations. Last week, Verizon and Nokia confirmed a multi-site deployment at Thames Freeport along the Thames Estuary outside London, covering six private 5G networks variously at the Port of Tilbury, Ford’s Dagenham plant, and the London Gateway complex. Verizon Business also has a long-time deal with Associated British Ports (ABP) in Southampton, also with Nokia. Separately, Norway-based Tampnet said last week it has deployed private 5G on an offshore production platform for oil firm Aker BP, as part of a deal that will multiply to six other oil platforms in the North Sea, at least.
The bug is catching, it seems – or suddenly rampant, at least, as the ports sector has been a busy customer for network vendors. Reports this week said system integrator Sedna Africa has secured a deal with Cornelder de Moçambique, a joint venture between Dutch ports operator Cornelder Group and the state-owned Mozambique Ports and Railways (CFM) company, to deploy a private mobile network at the Port of Beira in Mozambique. The Port of Beira, located in the centre of the country, connects Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, by road or rail. It has a $290 million government grant from 2023 to expand and modernize.
As yet, there is no word on the allocation of spectrum or the identity of the network vendor – in either the UK or Mozambique deployments. RCR Wireless has covered Three Group Solutions’ previous works at the Port of Felixstowe, and is sure there are answers out there, but its filing system is screwy, and the reference cannot be easily found. Three Group Solutions has also presented the Felixstowe story at RCR’s Industrial Wireless Forum, in years past, following UK government funding in 2022 to build a £3.4 million private 5G network at the site – as a proof of concept “to deliver on two use cases: predictive maintenance of quay cranes using IoT sensors and providing communications for remote control yard cranes”.
Blue Mesh Solutions and the University of Cambridge were also involved. Steve Wylie, then head of corporate sales at CK Hutchison’s local operator division, Three UK, said at the time: “Traditional methods of communicating to CCTV needed for remote control have limitations on bandwidth and flexibility for extension across the port. 5G and its unique low latency and high throughput capabilities make it the optimum technology to power remote control and support the port’s long term growth objectives.” Secure IoT specialist Blue Mesh Solutions talked at the time about “combining [IoT] sensors with AI algorithms to search for inferences in data that are hidden from standard analysis methods”. It said: “Digital twins [are] the future of computer and engineering science, and 5G is an enabling tech.”
All of which gives a sense of the scope of the project at the site now, as it stretches into a proper private 5G deployment across two distinct shipping sites. Graham Wilde, head of 5G Business Development at Three Group Solutions, said on social media: “We’re live with 5G. Three Group Solutions and Boldyn Networks have turned on one of the biggest and most important private 5G networks in the UK, supporting the Port of Felixstowe and Harwich International Port. We are now supporting autonomous trucks from Westwell (see image) as well as human-driven vehicles, quay cranes, gantry cranes and many other machines and applications – helping to keep these two vital ports running efficiently, and the UK economy firing on all cylinders.”
The Port of Felixstowe, where the river Orwell joins the English channel in Suffolk, is the UK’s largest container port. It handles almost half (48 percent) of the region’s containerised trade, or about 3.2 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) per year. It ranks as the tenth busiest trading port in Europe. Harwich International Port International Port, on the opposite side of the quay, where the River Stour joins the North Sea, runs ferry services to the Hook of Holland, and freight services to Rotterdam Europort. Both sites are owned by Hutchison Ports. Like Thames Freeport, where Verizon and Nokia are holed-up, both are designated as UK ‘freeports’ – together as Freeport East.
As far back as 2020, CK Hutchison was running a private 4G network, in some fashion, at the Port of Felixstowe. At the announcement of the opening of a new centre of excellence in London for private 4G/5G networks for large enterprises, managed by CKH Innovations Opportunities Development (CKH IOD), it said it would call call on radio engineers and solution designers responsible for private networks at the Port of Felixstowe – and also at Heathrow Airport. Which is interesting, looking back – not just because it has taken until now, it seems, to make (or extend) the Felixstowe setup as a fully-commercial private 5G operation, but because Heathrow was stalking the meeting rooms at MWC in Barcelona in late February, sizing up private 5G partners.
