Nokia announced that it will deploy industrial-grade 5G Standalone (SA) private wireless networking for the 5G4KMU project, which spans five leading research centers in the state of Baden-Württemberg, in Germany.
Once the project is fully completed, it will comprise the largest 5G campus-based networking deployment in German research and academia, the Finnish vendor said.
Designed to support 5G4KMU in its mission to provide small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with an expert introduction to 5G, the private wireless networks will be used to help companies develop new 5G-based products, applications and business models.
The networks, which will be deployed in partnership with Smart Mobile Labs, will be based on the recently announced Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (DAC) 5G SA platform that offers high-bandwidth, low-latency private networking, local edge computing capabilities and a catalog with applications. Nokia highlighted that the new platform is an industrial-grade compact, plug-and-play platform, comprised of network equipment and a cloud-based operation monitoring system.
“As we introduce 5G to companies for the first time, it’s essential that we make the technology easy to use and accessible,” said Matthias Schneider, project manager for 5G4KMU. “By combining high-performance wireless networking with local cloud edge computing, enterprises have an ideal platform to develop use cases in fields such as IoT, analytics, automation and remote operations.”
“The 5G4KMU project is a great example of the impetus that 5G can give small and medium-sized businesses as they make their transformation to Industry 4.0. Thanks to 5G spectrum availability, local expertise and a strong partner ecosystem, Germany is championing the 5G private wireless market – and this ambitious multi-site deployment puts 5G4KMU at the forefront of that momentum,” said Raghav Sahgal, president, Nokia Enterprise.
Funded by the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Economics, Labor and Housing, 5G4KMU is the result of co-operation across a number of leading research institutes that leverage their expertise across several sectors including manufacturing, automation, industrial engineering, healthcare and Industry 4.0.
Partners on the project include Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA in Stuttgart and its Project Group for Automation in Medicine and Biotechnology PAMB, Mannheim; Reutlingen Industry 4.0 Center, Reutlingen; wbk Institute of Production Science, Karlsruhe; Campus Schwarzwald Center for Digitization, Leadership and Sustainability, Freudenstadt.
Smart Mobile Labs is the largest 5G system integrator in Germany, supplying the first 5G campus networks to many customers in 2020. Nokia partnered with Smart Mobile Labs AG for the provision of deployment and integration services to deliver the Nokia DAC solution.
Nokia has recently announced 5G private wireless deployments that include Deutsche Bahn, Lufthansa Technik and Toyota Production Engineering.
The Finnish vendor has 220 large enterprise customers across industries worldwide, of which more than 30 are 5G.
