The private 5G offering will cover more than 190 countries
NTT Ltd. is combining its fully managed private 5G and Edge Compute solutions with satellite connectivity provider SES’s medium earth orbit communications system — the O3b mPOWER — to offer Edge as a Service to enterprise customers.
John-Paul Hemingway, chief strategy officer at SES, claimed that the partnership will provide “seamless integration and extension of terrestrial and satellite networks” and enable enterprises to “unlock the full potential of emerging technologies like 5G, IoT, and cloud computing, and drive digital transformation across industries.”
The collaboration is, of course, welcome news for companies that operate in regions where terrestrial networks are unreliable or have limited presence, such as those in the energy, mining and maritime sectors. NTT and SES, however, also stated that any enterprise looking to accelerate their digital transformation plans will also benefit from the high-performance connectivity and versatility that comes from combining private 5G networks and satellite technology.
“Private 5G is a transformative power that enables enterprises to build upon existing network infrastructure to deliver reliable, high bandwidth, and low latency connections for multiple use cases operating on a single private 5G network,” commented Olivier Posty, country managing director of Luxembourg, NTT. “As our customers continue to innovate, network partners with the right skills and expertise will be critical to success in today’s competitive market.”
The joint offering will cover more than 190 countries with public-private roaming, and in addition to having access to NTT’s Edge + Private 5G capabilities, customers can also receive support around use-case design, application development, system integration, implementation, as well as managed services.
In a press statement, Alejandro Cadenas, associate vice president of EMEA Telco Mobility Research at IDC, called the partnership between NTT and SES “an industry-first milestone at the whole industry level.”
“This will open great opportunities also in countries where 5G spectrum is not yet ready, enabling the transformation of companies at a global scale,” Cadenas added.
