The site at the French port belongs to Alcatel Submarine Networks, a division of Nokia
Alcatel Submarine Networks is boasting it has the “largest private industrial 5G network in Europe” in Calais, France. It runs on 59 small cell antennas, covering the 50,000 square metre production site, which is Nokia’s optical submarine division.
Nokia supplied the network, working with mobile operator Iliad and enterprise service provider Free Pro, which are both part of Iliad Group. In February, Iliad chose Nokia to deploy its 5G infrastructure in France and Italy.
The French headquartered firms of Sopra Steria and BSCA are also involved: they specialise in consulting on Industry 4.0 projects and integration.
Details were not provided about what spectrum is used, so it could use frequencies licensed to the Iliad Group for its public infrastructure or possibly spectrum in the 2.8-4GHz band with the French regulator Arcep is making available for private 5G networks.
Apparently the installation took more than two years to develop and integrate, according to Nokia. It covers 11 buildings and loading docks with 57 of the small providing indoor emission points and other two outside.
The project is intended to be a major step in transforming ASN’s operations to Industry 4.0 and modern industrial processes. ASN wants to “combine virtual and real environments… to interconnect… purchasing, procurement, logistics, production, maintenance, supervision [and so on]”. It is pursuing a number of industrial IoT practices and applications from the outset, said Nokia.