Swisscom Broadcast is working with Nokia to deploy a nationwide drone network of 300 drones for the emergency services, public safety, and private industrial sectors. It follows the same model as Nokia’s drone rollout in Belgium with Citymesh, and is expected to pass it in terms of its volume and scope as the “largest drone network in the world”, said the Finnish vendor.
Swisscom Broadcast, the enterprise-facing security and analytics arm of Swiss operator Swisscom, is offering a fully managed drone solution to national and regional police, fire, ambulance, and rescue services in the first instance. It uses Swisscom’s public 4G/5G network, and Nokia’s drone-in-a-box solution, sold via its new Nokia Drone Networks division.
The drone bundle includes the drone, a docking station, a ground control station, a payload with video and thermal cameras, plus related software and service components. The service will scale, from a start-point of less than 100 drones (and perhaps less than 50), as customers trial the service, and multiply across different industrial sectors.
Swisscom Broadcast is offering to define and design the use cases, and to deliver the network connection and drone flight, managed by remote drone pilots in a central control room, as well as video, imagery, and other telemetry data to the customer. The Nokia solution supports interfaces for third-party integrations for sundry dispatch, management, inspection, and monitoring systems.
A statement explained: “Public safety agencies in Switzerland will easily tap into the nationwide drone network by simply requesting a drone flight, similar to a ride-sharing service, from Swisscom Broadcast. They will also be backed up by a service portfolio with expertise, compliance, data collection and analysis of the collected data from Nokia and Swisscom Broadcast.”
Nokia Drone Networks is part of Nokia’s broad Mission-Critical Industrial Edge (MXIE) portfolio, although it is not being deployed with its MXIE edge compute platform initially. In conversation (to be written up), Nokia and Swisscom Broadcast said the service offering will flex with customers and applications over time to also include Nokia’s private 4G/5G and edge compute solutions.
Swisscom Broadcast said it might, eventually, be offered with slices of its public 5G SA network, too. But the initial pitch, and as per the Citymesh model, is to blue-light and public-safety services in Switzerland. Use cases for infrastructure inspection and perimeter protection, which have been well worked by Nokia as part of its private 4G/5G push in Industry 4.0, are also on the agenda.
Nokia said: “Drones will boost worker safety in the Swiss industrial sector – such as [by] inspecting tall or hard-to-reach infrastructure, which removes the need for workers to climb or walk around hazardous areas.” The security industry, on its own, and as part of Industry 4.0, is also a key focus. Swisscom Broadcast cited a shortage of workers in the sector – to patrol sites, for example.
The two companies said they will continue, as required with each use-case deployment, to cooperate with regulatory bodies and frameworks – “especially from spectrum and aviation safety standpoints”.
They talked about the importance of the project for the wider industrial drone sector – as a further proof point, following the Citymesh deployment, to “advance industrial use cases, automation, beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations, and expansion of 3GPP technologies for drone use”. The service is expected to be available in all areas of Switzerland, they said.
Dominik Müller, chief executive at Swisscom Broadcast, said: “We can speed the go-to-market of our drones-as-a-service offer to customers in the industrial and public safety sectors. Integration of our existing ‘people density tool’ and drone operations with Nokia’s industrial-grade hardware, in combination with an open… software architecture, is important [for] such large-scale projects.”
Raghav Sahgal, president of cloud and network services at Nokia, said: “[The] Nokia drone solution enables large-scale projects as it incorporates our MXIE technology to power its advanced computing functions and software. It will help Swiss enterprises gain access to a superior drones-as-a-Service offering to enhance worker and public safety.”
An interview with Nokia and Swisscom Broadcast will follow.
