- Nokia is partnering with Vale, a Brazilian multinational, to build digital twins and supervision systems for mining operations
- The companies aim to improve performance, reliability ands safety
- Nokia should be able to peddle the work in other private network deployments
Vale, a $41.8 billion Brazilian multinational mining company, is partnering with Nokia Bell Labs to deliver digital twins and supervision systems on private networks to improve the performance, reliability and safety of mining operations.
The agreement builds on an existing relationship at Vale's autonomous iron-ore mine in Carajás, Brazil — the world's largest iron ore open pit mine.
Nokia Bell Labs has been working on the project for several months and estimates the system will increase productivity by up to 25% and improve IT operations’ safety by up to 85%, Asad Khan, research director of 5G and wireless networks at SNS Telecom in an email to Fierce.
The digital twin will “initially provide a digital and visual representation of the network from the perspective of all connected devices and mining machinery, including hauling trucks and autonomous drillers. Over time, as sufficient meaningful data is gathered, the system will utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify how to shape the network to predictively meet specific requirements," Khan said.
Nokia can spread the love
Nokia should be able to re-use some of its general work with Vale in other private network deployments. "Given Nokia's extensive footprint of private networks in mines and other industrial facilities, it's a no-brainer," Khan said. "What's particularly interesting is that Nokia recently pitched this digital twin solution to Roy Hill in Australia, a well-known customer of Ericsson's private network solution.”
Nokia is the number one private network provider outside of China, according to Dell’Oro Group, signing on customers such as John Deere, which is doubling down on private networking. Huawei is still the biggest global private network supplier, including China. Ericsson ranks third globally, followed by Samsung.
Private networking sales will become more important to vendors over the next five years — but private networking revenues won't make up major shortfalls in public radio access network (RAN) sales yet, according to Dell’Oro and other analysts.
Nokia is currently the major player in private networking for mines. "Nokia's involvement in mine-specific private networks dates back to the early 2010s when Alcatel-Lucent deployed one of the world's first private LTE networks for mining giant Rio Tinto's iron ore mines in the Pilbara region of Australia," SNS's Khan noted. "Since then, our database of global private network engagements has tracked Nokia-supplied private cellular network equipment across dozens of mining sites” in more than a dozen countries and mining companies across Australia, Latin America, Asia and Africa.