Russian telco MTS and Ericsson have signed a strategic partnership to develop private 5G-ready networks for industrial enterprises in Russia, the vendor said in a release.
Since 2019, MTS has implemented more than 15 pilot projects for private networks in partnership with Ericsson across various industries. The two companies have also signed contracts for the construction of commercial LTE/5G-ready networks in Russia for multiple leading Russian enterprises, including SIBUR, EVRAZ and Severstal.
The two partners noted that there is increasing demand for dedicated private networks from various industries – particularly the mining and energy sectors. The goal of the strategic partnership between MTS and Ericsson is to meet this demand and jointly support the development of Industry 4.0 in Russia.
Inessa Galaktionova, SVP Telecom at MTS, said: “This agreement signals a new era of cooperation between MTS and Ericsson. Dedicated networks are vital infrastructure that Russian enterprises need for digitalization and automation of key production processes. We will leverage the experience gained over the last two years in creating dedicated technological networks to provide customers with integrated, turnkey solutions for multiple technological needs in various industries including mining, metallurgy, oil and gas, energy, engineering and transport and logistics”.
Sebastian Tolstoy, head of Ericsson Russia, said: “We are pleased to have this opportunity to make a significant contribution to the development of Industry 4.0 and strengthen the competitiveness of enterprises in Russia. We believe that all industries, without exception, will benefit from the adoption of 5G technologies and diverse 5G use cases.”
“Dedicated networks with ultra-high bandwidth and super-low latency allow enterprises to run multiple use case scenarios on a single network, help increase the safety of people, and improve the environmental friendliness of production. From our work with a variety of Russian companies we see the mining and energy sectors are ready to deploy and actively operate dedicated networks. In the near future we expect demand from other industries to grow,” Tolstoy added.
In September, MTS and Ericsson had announced the completion of construction and launch of operations of what it claimed to be Russia’s first commercial 5G-ready private network for Polymetal, one of the world’s largest producers of gold and silver, at the Nezhdaninskoye gold deposit in the Republic of Sakha.
Within the project, MTS deployed a wireless network for Yuzhno-Verkhoyansk Mining Company, affiliated with Polymetal. The network supports integrated mining dispatching systems, positioning, remote and automated control of various objects, including excavators, drilling rigs, measuring devices, monitoring systems for remote equipment and video monitoring.
At the first stage, the network will operate in the LTE standard with the possibility to be upgraded to 5G.
The network is built on Ericsson Dedicated Networks solution, which complies with the 3GPP standards. It supports 4G and 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) simultaneously and allows dual-mode core capability to support 5G New Radio Standalone (5G NR SA).
