For many outside the world of telecoms, Nokia is still associated with its ubiquitous presence in the late-nineties-to-early noughties mobile phone market. Back then, who didn’t have an ‘indestructible’ Nokia 3210? Yet the Finnish-based corporation, which started life as a pulp mill in 1865, before expanding into rubber and cables, has had many incarnations over […]
For many outside the world of telecoms, Nokia is still associated with its ubiquitous presence in the late-nineties-to-early noughties mobile phone market. Back then, who didn’t have an ‘indestructible’ Nokia 3210?
Yet the Finnish-based corporation, which started life as a pulp mill in 1865, before expanding into rubber and cables, has had many incarnations over the years, producing everything from toilet rolls and respirators to microcomputers and rubber boots.
Today Nokia’s focus remains firmly on providing wireless and fixed network infrastructure, communications and networks service platforms to telecoms operators and service providers.
Over the past five years, the corporation has also made a strategic push into enterprise networking, as different verticals require connectivity to transform their business processes.
Over a very strong coffee the firm’s CEO for UK and Ireland Phil Siveter explains to TechInformed that this focus was initially borne out of the demand for mission-critical verticals such as defence, energy and transport, that required “carrier grade” connectivity and security.
“We do a huge amount of enterprise networking now, it’s a business that has grown rapidly for us over the last five years and now brings in around €2bn a year in business for us globally,” he says.
For context, this sum represents around 8% of the vendor’s total revenues – something that the firm has said it wants to increase to 10% by 2025.
Major support contracts Nokia has secured in recent years include a deal with GEANT (a routing and switching replacement project for European research and education networks), as well as projects for UK transport groups, Network Rail and Highways England.
“We’re intrinsically involved in delivering connectivity to all these enterprises. And we’ve really doubled down on that when we talk about what’s coming next, which is 5G.”
5G in enterprise
Like many mobile network operators and telco vendors, Nokia claims that there’s a big opportunity in 5G connectivity for enterprises – with use cases ranging from online gaming and banking to mining, industry 4.0 and logistics.
“It’s going to have a transformational impact over the coming years, and we are starting to see that already” Siveter enthuses.
Phil Siveter Nokia’s UK CEO, at Connected Britain 2023
The CEO admits however, that one of the challenges he faces in communicating the benefits of 5G to enterprise, is the telecoms industry’s propensity to big up the tech and play down the outcomes.
To this end, Siveter says Nokia is currently working with domain experts to understand how best to deliver technologies into sectors that have been operating the same ways for the last thirty years and may be reluctant to take the risk in investment.
“But they do need to work with us and other partners to understand how 5G can change their business. Because those who embrace the technology are already starting to differentiate in the market with improved cost efficiencies, with innovative solutions with faster time to market.
“We’re starting to see that happen particularly across manufacturing where the pioneers are really starting to see the benefits and there’s going to be a race to catch up. My message is don’t ignore it.”
Private networks
Siveter is able to list a number of areas where 5G is having positive outcomes in industry, and in particular the impact that private networks are having on enterprises.
At the backend of 2022 there were about 1000 private networks globally, spread across 72 countries and 12 verticals. Industries that have been at the vanguard of this private 4G and 5G use include manufacturing, ports and mines.
Nokia’s partnerships in this area include an agreement with mining facing solutions integrator Sedna to enable ‘Industry 4.0’ applications including digital automation to improve safety, operations and sustainability.
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A Nokia case study shows that the digital automation of a mining truck fleet in Africa using a private wireless network led to a 10% reduction in fuel consumption and 15,000 tonnes in Co2 emissions.
Over in the UK, meanwhile, Siveter references the V-CAL project led by the North East Automotive Alliance (NEAA), which involved running four zero-emission battery powered autonomous HGVs on private roads owned by Nissan Sunderland.
Going private: How 5G networks can enable Industry 4.0
Another classic use of 5G private networks in action – for Nokia and others – can be found in seaports around the world. Due to their isolated nature, ports act as microcosms of what a smart city or a huge, connected factory might one day look like.
Since 2021 Southampton Port has been a major test bed for Nokia, as Silveter outlines: “We’ve flooded the port with 5G and use it to track containers using HD Cameras and IoT to track relatively simple things, such as damage to the big containers.”
Closer to home, Nokia’s flagship factory Oulu in Finland has been recognised as a lighthouse “Industry 4.0 era” project by the World Economic Forum in terms of how to do 5G in an enterprise environment.
According to Siveter, the overall performance of this factory is constantly improving.
“We use the private network to control robots to do machine feeds. To use IoT tracking of kit to check for wear and tear of machinery.
“We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the performance. We used to talk about it being a 30 to 40% improvement on productivity – but now we talk about it being 250% overall performance improvement in that manufacturing plant as an enabling technology. These are the kind of game changing impacts private networks can have,” he says.
Is cost still considered a barrier for companies considering private networks?
“It’s interesting that’s the perception,” he replies. “We’ve just done a piece of work with Global Data, and they looked at all the enterprises that have tested and used private wireless to date, and 80% of them saw an ROI in less than 6 months.
“Because the cost of entry is not millions and millions these aren’t big investments compared to big bits of equipment at a manufacturing plant.”
Connecting the watts
While countries such as Germany and Ireland have carved out spectrum for the energy sector which has allowed them to build their own networks, other territories, including the UK, have created publicly available spectrum where any firm, for a small fee, can register to bid for up to £2m worth of spectrum to deliver their own private networks.
One of Nokia’s flagship wins in this area has been at British Sugar’s manufacturing plant as part of a major ‘factories of the future’ upgrade.
The sugar plant’s project initially kicked off two years ago with a 4G network in partnership with Nokia and Virgin Media O2 – a set up which has been designed to upgrade to 5G “as and when required and dictated by business need”.
The network has been designed to connect multiple IoT devices, enabling British Sugar to streamline its production process, introduce intelligence, automated production lines, robotics and drones.
Healthcare and the metaverse
Another collaboration between Nokia and VMO2, includes building what both suppliers claim to be the UK’s ‘first 5G connected hospital’.
The Maudsley Smart Hospital and Maudsley Smart Pharmacy trials are funded by NHS Digital and are designed to explore the efficiency, safety and security benefits of using 5G-connected technologies in hospitals.
“There’s no question that 5G is going to have an impact on healthcare,” says Siveter.
“Not just in the hospitals but we’ve done some interesting work in Finland too where we’ve trialled 5G in the asset tracking of beds using IoT; using AI, tracking data and driving efficiency in that patient life cycle; and, on fibre sites, helping with remote care in the home,” he adds.
Nokia predicts 5G will transform Healthcare
As well as physical plants and hospitals, Siveter adds that Nokia is also looking at virtual sites, as it grapples with the intersection of where industry meets the metaverse.
“The idea that there is just one metaverse is wrong,” he opines. “There are going to be multiple metaverses and we think that they will fall into 3 categories.
“One is for consumers. And we’ll do all the AR and VR connectivity. We’ll see the technology and standards being used to match the price points and services that needs.”
“Then you will have a metaverse that supports low cost, low tech- required enterprises: retail and non-mission critical companies.
“And then there’s the third one, which involves the industrial metaverse and that is where it’s going to have real impact,” he claims.
The CEO reveals that Nokia has been working with French systems integrator Dassault, merging its digital twin capability software management with Nokia’s private wireless network to deliver real-time digital replicas of manufacturing plants.
“You can see exactly what’s happening and interact in a virtual way with that digital twin. That’s the beginning of the metaverse in an industrial environment,” he adds.
6G and HEXA
With the arrival of 6G, Siveter thinks we will soon be able to start thinking more about ‘human augmented reality’ and live data that is embedded in how we operate, the way we work and how this intersects with and supports these metaverses.
To this end, Nokia and its industrial research arm Nokia Bell Labs is leading on a European Union 6G research and development programme known as HEXA-X which promises to explore ways in which we can connect the physical, digital and human worlds more effectively.
Nokia Bell Labs believes that 6G can be used to power preventive healthcare solutions or even to create “a sixth sense” network that intuitively understands our intentions, making our interactions with the physical world more effective and anticipating our needs, improving productivity.
However, Siveter is keen to stress that the building blocks the telco vendor is putting in place with 5G and fibre is giving the corporation plenty of opportunity to innovate right now.
“There is so much work to do on leveraging these investments to the benefit of enterprises. 6G will come, but let’s get this working first.”
