2024-03-03 04:45:00
It was one of the stars this week of the Mobile World Congress, the mobile show in Barcelona. This annual high mass of the telecoms industry gave pride of place to 5G. The new generation of mobile network is the flagship product of operators around the world. If, for the general public, 5G is synonymous with better connectivity on smartphones, this technology is above all the first to have been designed for businesses. Telecom operators are counting on this new network to digitize all parts of the economy. All boast significant gains in production and competitiveness. Mats Granryd, the director general of the GSMA, which organizes the Mobile World Congress, hammered it home: “The biggest opportunity in the mobile sector is the industrial Internet,” he said during the inauguration of the show.
Huawei’s efforts
Among the telecoms champions, the Chinese Huawei is sparing no effort to transform factories with its private 5G networks. He works, for example, with his compatriot Midea, a manufacturer of household appliances and air conditioners. In these factories, mobile robots have displaced traditional forklifts. These power production lines where robotic arms have replaced most employees. Ultimately, quality control is carried out by cameras powered by artificial intelligence. Machine data finally feeds predictive maintenance software to prevent breakdowns.
In the health sector, VMware presented an ambulance prototype equipped with virtual and augmented reality headsets
Ports undergoing transformation
Ports are another industry undergoing transformation. In Antwerp, Belgium, Orange is working on different use cases linked to 5G. Among them, the French operator has equipped tugboats, powerful boats that help container ships enter and leave the port, with cameras and various sensors. Radar and sonar data are reported in real time. They ultimately make it possible to increase traffic. At the Chinese port of Qingdao, in the east of the country, Huawei deployed “an intelligent and complete automation system”. In freight terminals, autonomous cameras and robots have replaced dock workers. All operations are controlled remotely by operators in front of their screens.
The health sector is also in the sights of the mobile industry. In Barcelona, the American software publisher VMware presented a unique ambulance prototype. The interior is lined with screens and cameras, allowing paramedics to benefit from specialist advice on the way to the hospital. The staff has virtual and augmented reality headsets to retrieve information to provide certain emergency care. 5G notably ensures security and continuity of communications, even if the network is overloaded, which was not possible with the previous generation.
“Smart stadiums”
Another big market is cities and utilities. Like most telecom operators, Deutsche Telekom is developing solutions with 5G to remotely control street lighting, improve road traffic and parking, optimize waste collection, or even monitor sensitive sites using fleets of drones. Ericsson, for its part, is banking on the advent of “smart stadiums”, a market that it estimates at $24.5 billion by 2028. With partners, the Swedish telecom equipment giant has imagined a paid mobile application to connect fans, whether they are at the stadium or not. Above all, it gives the possibility of accessing any available video stream, and different camera angles, in real time during a match. A function allows you to go back, for example, during a disputed arbitration decision. Here, 5G is praised for its high speeds, such as its ability to allocate parts of the network to specific uses.
Europe late
The mobile industry has no shortage of ideas. But since the arrival of 5G, around 2020, the conversion of companies has been slow in Europe. “There is still little industrial 5G in France, and in Germany, often cited as an example in Europe, it is not amazing either”, notes Laure de La Raudière, the president of Arcep, the telecoms regulator in France. According to Christian Leon, the boss of Ericsson France, the problem is firstly that “Europe has fallen behind in the deployment of 5G”. The leader argues that only 25% of the population of the Old Continent is covered by 5G via dedicated frequencies, compared to 85% in the United States and 95% in China. This is very insufficient, according to him, to hope to envisage a real development of industrial 5G. This concerns the European Commission, which plans to revise its telecoms regulation to allow operators to invest more in networks. In his eyes, it is the competitiveness of the continent that is at stake.
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