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Deloitte to build robot-powered smart factory at Wichita State

Deloitte and Wichita State University are building a new 60,000-square foot (5,500 square metre) smart factory showcase facility on Wichita State’s Innovation Campus, already sponsored by Deloitte, to include a full-scale production line, along with a partner space and lab facility. The new facility, dubbed...

Athonet releases 5G core as-a-service on AWS to spur private 5G market

Italy-based core network vendor and private network pioneer Athonet has released its open 5G core network on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enable mobile carriers, radio vendors, and enterprises to deploy and experiment with working private 5G networks just by connecting radio equipment to...

US pumps $1bn into homegrown AI, 5G and quantum computing

The US government is to invest $1 billion into a dozen new research and development (R&D) institutes to stimulate the economy with homegrown artificial intelligence (AI), quantum information science (QIS), 5G communications, and other emerging technologies. The mission is to drive technological improvements in...

Telcos need hand-holding on private 5G for industry, says Air France

Traditional network operators, as well as network vendors, do not have the in-house expertise to serve the enterprise market with industrial-grade private LTE and 5G networking. They need hand-holding by market specialists, in the form of enterprise customers and system integrators, if they are...

Shell builds digital twin of Singapore refinery, targets 25% jump in performance

Royal Dutch Shell (Shell) has started on a four-year project to construct a digital twin of its Pulau Bukom petrochemical manufacturing site in Singapore. On completion in 2024, and in pilot between times, the virtual replica of the Pulau Bukom facility will be the...

Mercedes-Benz opens €730m Factory 56 with private 5G from Telefónica, Ericsson

Mercedes-Benz (Daimler) has opened the doors of its new 5G-connected €730 million Factory 56 facility, part of a €2.1 billion “future-oriented” car plant and the administrative area in Sindelfingen, in Germany. The highly-digitised Factory 56 facility, networked by Telefónica Germany and Ericsson, is billed...

Rolls-Royce intros ‘breakthrough’ framework for ethical AI in Industry 4.0 – and 5.0

Rolls-Royce is to make available new “breakthrough” research on how to construct an ethical framework for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) that people will “genuinely trust”. The company has claimed two templates for ethical industrial AI, which will help AI gain wider trust...

Arm intros top-end Cortex-R82 for heavy-duty edge AI and IoT

Arm has announced a new 64-bit Linux-capable Cortex-R processor, designed for the kind of computational edge-based storage solutions that will underpin new heavy-duty AI applications in demanding industrial IoT scenarios. The new top-of-the-line Arm Cortex-R82 is the company’s first 64-bit, Linux-capable processor in the company’s...

Telefónica Germany builds 5G core network on AWS to capture Industry 4.0 market

Telefónica in Germany has started the process to build its 5G core network and functions in the cloud in order to develop and deploy new IoT and AI solutions for industrial customers, as well as enterprises at large. It is using Amazon Web Services...

Vale and Vivo to extend private LTE to Serra Leste mine in Brazil

Brazilian mining firm Vale has said it will extend its private LTE rollout to the Serra Leste open pit iron ore mine in Pará, Brazil. The move is part of a $3.9 million (R$21 million) agreement with Telefônica Brazil’s Vivo business unit, which has...

China’s showcase 5G Mawan Smart Port on track, with Huawei, Alibaba, Tencent

The Hong Kong based port and shipping conglomerate China Merchants Port (CMP) Group has said its 5G-enabled port transformation project with Huawei, Alibaba and Tencent at the Haixing (Mawan) port at the mouth of the Pearl River in Shenzhen, in China, is in test...

Aveva to buy OSIsoft for $5bn to service ‘largest digital-change projects in history’

UK based software company Aveva, majority owned by France based automation specialist Schneider Electric, has struck a deal to acquire US data management outfit OSIsoft for $5 billion. OSIsoft is backed by Japan-based tech firm Softbank. The pair said they will “service the largest...

Edzcom and Signify team up on private Li-Fi and 5G combo for industry

Finnish private networking and edge computing specialist Edzcom has signed a deal with Netherlands-based lighting company Signify to offer Li-Fi based solutions combining two-way wireless infrared and visible light connectivity for industrial IoT applications to its customers in the manufacturing, energy, oil and gas,...

Energy sector urged to get behind LTE – first with carriers, then with licences

The energy industry should consider the LTE family of cellular technologies, including NB-IoT, LTE-M, and 4G and 5G, to spur their longer-term Industry 4.0 ambitions, according to analyst house Guidehouse Insights. The energy market must start experimenting with cellular right away, it says, with...

67 local licences in 10 months – 5G in the home of Industry 4.0 and the jeapordy for carriers

Germany has issued 67 local spectrum licences for private LTE and 5G to enterprises since November 2019. What should we make of this number, and the run-rate so far for industrial-grade cellular in the home of Industrie 4.0? Because 67 does not sound like that...

Nokia signs with LS Electric to supply IoT analytics to Korean utility market

South Korea based electric power equipment company LS Electric has signed up Finnish vendor Nokia to supply an analytics-based asset management platform to local power utilities. LS Electric, a division of Seoul-based conglomerate LS Group, wants an IoT and AI solution to enable customers to...

Booming MEC market to hit $7bn by 2024, as 90% of industry brings data home

Nine in 10 industrial enterprises will use edge computing by 2022, as cloud workloads shift closer to the ‘coal face’ of industry in pursuit of lower latency and higher security. This spiralling interest in close-range industrial analytics functions will drive the value of multi-access...

Tapping into Industry 4.0 with 5G private networks (Reader Forum)

“Productivity isn’t everything, but, in the long run, it’s almost everything.” This oft-quoted aphorism from economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has new life in the shadow of Covid-19. Despite its hefty toll on the global economy, the pandemic presents an opportunity to refocus...

Vodafone to supply 5G to Port of Kiel for autonomous ferries and port logistics

Vodafone is to supply 5G infrastructure and connectivity to a new port automation project for the Port of Kiel, at the Kiel Fjord, a 17 kilometre inlet of the Baltic Sea in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. Vodafone will extend 5G coverage...

UAE operator du white-labels Software AG’s Cumulocity IoT platform

Telecoms operator du, formerly Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC), has partnered with Germany-based Software AG to offer a subscription-based digital-change offer to UAE based enterprises. The pair called it a “first of its kind collaboration” and the “largest IoT partnership for business solutions” in...

Verizon relaunches IoT marketplace, lands digital transformation deal with Bayer

Verizon has launched (relaunched?) an IoT marketplace on its ThingSpace platform for customers to purchase, activate and manage customised IoT solutions.It has also announced a five-year contract with German pharmaceutical firm Bayer to build a cloud-based “next-generation global network infrastructure”. ThingSpace was introduced back in...

Huawei hypes industrial 5G, intros 5G2B package, opens Industry 4.0 test lab

Huawei has put focus on the role of 5G to stimulate industrial revolution, and go beyond the traditional scope of cellular as a straight communications technology for voice and video, dominated by the stunted consumer market. The China-based vendor has launched a “first batch”...

Verizon builds cm-level RTK into 5G network to prep for drone deliveries, driverless cars

Verizon is deploying real-time kinematic (RTK) satellite navigation on its 5G network in the US, to offer hyper-precise positioning with centimetre-level location accuracy for IoT tracking services, and notably development of drone deliveries and autonomous vehicles. Standard GPS positioning affords location accuracy of three-to-nine metres;...

NTT and Mavenir target Industry 4.0 in Germany with open private-5G combo

NTT Data, the business services division of NTT Group, is working with open RAN provider Mavenir to jointly develop a “complete range” of radio and core access solutions, plus data and device management platforms and analytics tools, for private 5G and 4G networks in...