Vodafone and Ericsson cement their place in Portugal's private 5G market

It is deploying a standalone (SA) network at its production centre in Alhandra, which has been churning out the grey dusty stuff for the last 130 years.

The aim is to maximise operational efficiency in line with Cimpor's ongoing decarbonisation strategy. Its aim is to reduce emissions by 37% by 2030, with the ultimate goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. The scheme has a budget of €150 million, which will cover the cost of modernising its industrial assets and R&D projects throughout the rest of the decade.

This includes availing itself of some choice items in the Ericsson Private 5G portfolio. This includes macro and micro radios – and radio dots – suitable for deployment in both indoor and outdoor environments, and cloud-based network management.

Sensitive data is hosted on premises, and Ericsson also promises zero-downtime upgrades, guaranteed service levels, and installation in mere hours.

"Ericsson Private 5G delivers secure, high-speed 5G connectivity tailored to industrial environments, enabling seamless integration with IT systems and playing a pivotal role in accelerating Cimpor's digital transformation. Using Ericsson Private 5G's scalability, cloud-based management and enhanced data security, Cimpor is able to start small and expand the network as needed," said Ericsson, which missed a golden opportunity to include puns about concrete steps that will cement Cimpor's future prosperity, or laying a strong foundation for innovation...

...Anyway, as for use cases, Cimpor has plenty in mind. First and foremost, it will use its new network for remote machine health monitoring to improve reliability and productivity. It also plans to use drones for inspections – which will reduce stoppages and provide a safer working environment – and HD connected cameras to keep tabs on the whole facility.

Some workers will also get smart glasses with voice control, freeing up their hands and therefore making them safer.

"This communication infrastructure and state-of-the-art technological applications enable Cimpor to monitor and maintain its assets even more efficiently, contributing to mitigate risks, reduce its environmental footprint and optimise costs in one of the most relevant industries for the national economy," said Ericsson.

Ericsson claims these use cases will indirectly reduce Cimpor's emissions by around 1% per year, which doesn't sound like much, but equates to 140,000 tons of CO2, which equals the annual absorption of 6.5 million trees.

What's more, Ericsson said this is the first private 5G SA network in Portugal, which, if nothing else, gives Cimpor another coveted accolade to add to its collection.

Cimpor plans to deploy private 5G at two more plants in Portugal over the coming months. It also has operations in 10 other countries spread all over the world, so there is a lot of scope for further rollouts – which could be good news for Ericsson if this one lives up to its billing.