Local mobile operator NTT East, part of the multinational NTT group, has convened a cellular-geared Industry 4.0 working group of 18 domestic and international 5G equipment vendors to collaborate on private 5G propositions for enterprises in the eastern part of Japan. The likes of Airspan, Hewlett Packard, and Nokia are on the list, alongside local heavyweights including NEC, Kyocera, and Panasonic, plus multiple local divisions of NTT group companies.
An announcement, translated from the original Japanese, describes the alliance as a “co-creation project” to accelerate deployments of private 5G in the region, and also to reduce costs of private 5G to enterprises. It also suggests the scope is to “interconnect local (sic) 5G devices and demonstrate use cases, with the aim of popularizing and expanding the service by improving convenience”.
The essence of the work is to streamline multi-vendor private 5G environments. The statement says: “Local 5G systems… are generally constructed from products from the same vendor. Depending on the use case, there are many cases where equipment configurations are overspecified… By connecting equipment… across vendors, it is expected to create an environment with the optimal configuration [for] customer requirements and budget(s).”
It goes on: “[But for this]… it is necessary to tune the configuration parameters… across vendors, so the reality is that implementation is limited.” It says, as well, that private 5G deployments, especially in large venues like factories and warehouses, support a variety of use cases, and are required to change their RAN parameters in line with dynamic work environments. “ You need to adjust it each time,” writes NTT East.
“It is necessary to change the parameters during handover to change the base station to which the terminal connects… Expectations are high for the realization of autonomous and automatic device parameter control that eliminates the need for complicated operations by customers.” The 18 companies will seek to “promote interconnection” of their private 5G systems, and automate shifting device parameters according to use cases.
They will focus, in part, on high-definition video streaming cases – plus “cases where connectivity is not possible” without “know-how for interconnections”. A note in the press statement also says the group has a view to utilizing an open RAN controller (RIC), as specified by the O-RAN ALLIANCE, to autonomously specific RAN perimeters with industrial layout changes in factories or warehouses. “We aim to realize a system that provides services in a timely manner,” it writes.
The group said it will start joint demos before the year is out, and publish the results everywhere. The other companies involved (excluding the NTT showing) are Askey Computer, FLARE SYSTEMS, Hi-tech Inter, HTC, Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), LITE-ON Technology, Nippon Ryton, Quanta Cloud Technology, and REIGN Technology.
