Orange said that 75,000 SIM cards and 9,500 cards for machine-to-machine and IoT services will be activated for Flemish administrative offices
Orange Belgium has signed an initial five-year agreement to provide mobile connectivity and IoT services to the Flemish government, the telco said in a release.
The initial deal is extendable to seven years, Orange said.
The main aim of the new public contract, worth over 23 million euros ($24.4 million), is to enable all public administrations in the Flanders region to have access to Orange Belgium’s mobile network and services. The services include mobile telephony, mobile data communications and for machine-to-machine and IoT to a variety of administrative entities.
In total, over 75,000 SIM cards and 9,500 cards for machine-to-machine and IoT services will be activated for Flemish administrative offices.
In addition, the Belgian telecom operator will provide access to its phone app, smart parking capabilities for electric vehicles, mobile antennas for events and mobile intelligent voice services.
In the Flanders region, Orange Belgium had already opened what it claimed to be the first 5G network in the port of Antwerp and the first permanent 5G Lab in Antwerp.
The telco also deployed 5G technology in the cities of Antwerp, Ghent, Leuven and along the Flemish coast.
Xavier Pichon, CEO at Orange Belgium, said: “We are delighted with the continued collaboration with the Flemish Government, a long-time partner since 2003. Our long-standing relationship has always been driven by a constant pursuit of offering a smooth, innovative and reliable service.”
In September last year, Orange Belgium started to deploy its 5G Standalone core network on a cloud-native architecture together with partners Ericsson, Nokia and Oracle.
At the time of the launch, Orange Belgium said that it was working with Ericsson for the packet core of the network, with Oracle Communications for the signaling and routing network functions, while Nokia was in charge of the subscriber data management and 5G new radio.
The deployment of 5G SA solutions is enabling Orange Belgium to provide customized services for consumer markets and industry 4.0 services such as enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC) and massive Machine-Type Communications (mMTC) services.
The carrier also said its 5G SA core network on a cloud-native architecture will also enable network slicing.
