According to Ericsson, this is Ireland’s first indoor 5G campus network in a live manufacturing environment
Ericsson and Three Ireland have launched what they say is Ireland’s first indoor 5G campus network in a live manufacturing environment at Glanbia’s multi-purpose dairy processing plant in Ballyragget, County Kilkenny.
The indoor network is designed to deliver enhanced 5G coverage, low latency connectivity and improved data security inside the plant, as well as enable faster and more accurate maintenance tasks and provide for richer analysis of plant processes.
The network will run on Three Ireland’s 5G spectrum and Ericsson is providing the radio coverage using its Ericsson Radio Dot System. Some of the use cases that Glanbia will trial include Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) applications.
“The bespoke opportunities and insights which 5G can provide to organizations and sectors is really exciting to us at Three Ireland, delivering a real step-change from 4G,” commented Karl Duffy, head of enterprise and public sector at Three Ireland. “This is the first indoor 5G network of its kind in Ireland and will deliver real efficiencies for Glanbia. The opportunity is there for companies of all sizes to create a pilot and scale over time. The companies that act now will achieve first mover advantage within their sector which can’t be underestimated.”
For its part, Glanbia is “delighted” to be involved. Brian Farrell, engineering manager at Glanbia Ireland, Ballyragget, said the initiative is “allowing us to bring to life some of the early learnings from our participation in an EU funded Horizon 2020 5G project and “will accelerate the trial and adoption of some innovative Industry 4.0 use cases for us.”
Ericsson and Three Ireland have been working together on 5G since 2020, when the carrier first launched its next-generation network. The pair collaborated on a full 4G replacement and the deployment of full 5G Core. Further, Three Ireland was the first company to join Ericsson’s Global Startup 5G program, which aims to help CSPs accelerate the commercialization and monetization of 5G by introducing them to consumer innovation partners.
