Deutsche Telekom and Ericsson have announced a strategic partnership to jointly serve industrial enterprise customers with campus networks.
The German carrier said that the new solution will support diverse use cases on manufacturing shop floors, or at logistic centers, airports and harbors.
A campus network is a mobile network for a defined area and for specific applications. For example, for a building or an industrial campus. Campus solutions are tailored to the needs of business customers and their specific use cases.
The offering will combine public and private cellular networks with the aim of providing the best coverage, capacity and availability on the campus and in the wider area of activity, Deutsche Telekom said.
The collaborative approach will also allow both Deutsche Telekom and Ericsson to capture and service the emerging Industry 4.0 market sector, starting with LTE-based services with the aim of developing future-tailored services based on 5G technology.
In this partnership, campus network technology will be complemented with solutions from the Deutsche Telekom portfolio such as Wi-Fi and local network integration, as well as IoT products.
Use cases with customers in various industries include autonomous transportation of production materials, next-generation refinery and predictive maintenance, Deutsche Telekom said.
Adel Al-Saleh, CEO of T-Systems and Board Member of Deutsche Telekom, said: “Our enterprise and mid-sized customers demand secure, reliable, and high-performance network solutions tailored to their specific requirements. Deutsche Telekom and Ericsson have a longstanding partnership in innovation, technology and services. This unique partnership draws on the best of both companies to accelerate our clients’ automation and customer responsiveness today and into the future. We look forward to driving innovation in this partnership and making it a global success for our customers.”
“Our campus network solutions boast flexibility and reliability. We are excited to boost the productivity of our customers while setting the standard for Industry 4.0,” said Arun Bansal, president and head of Europe & Latin America at Ericsson. “Our close partnership with Deutsche Telekom will no doubt continue to showcase innovation and customer focused solutions that will raise the bar for smart manufacturing.
Campus networks combine public and private cellular connectivity to support diverse enterprise use cases. The private slice, which is completely isolated from the public cellular network, is for the enterprise’s exclusive use, according to the partners. Thanks to dedicated spectrum usage and Quality of Service mechanisms, the private network can provide more secure and predictable connectivity, the telco said.
As the data traffic is kept locally, customers can benefit from low network latency and a high degree of security. Companies can, for example, control and monitor real-time IoT applications in their operations, such as centrally controlled industrial robots and driverless transport systems.
Employees in the campus area also benefit from the enhanced coverage through public cellular network as they get significantly better connectivity for voice and data communication. External service providers and suppliers can also be connected over the public slice, for example, to enable maintenance scenarios.
In February this year, Deutsche Telekom announced its first campus network for industry in partnership with Osram. Deutsche Telekom and Osram tested a so-called “dual-slice” campus network in this joint project, which combines a public and a private LTE network on one common infrastructure, with the aim of guaranteeing an optimal indoor and outdoor coverage.
