Lufthansa Technik has partnered with Vodafone Business to launch a standalone private 5G campus network in an aircraft hangar for the first time.
Lufthansa Technik is the world’s leading independent provider of maintenance, repair and overhaul services (MRO) for civilian commercial aircraft.
The new private 5G network allows Lufthansa Technik to freely configure the network according to its needs, for example in relation to the upload and download speed of information required for its operations. Technicians can also use high-resolution virtual and augmented reality technologies to work even more precisely on the aircraft fuselages. As part of the private network, sensitive data is completely secured, as it does not leave the aircraft hangar.
Up to four very large aircrafts can park in the connected Lufthansa base at the same time, requiring very high bandwidth to manage the demand. With a capacity of more than one gigabit per second and latency times of less than ten milliseconds, the private 5G Stand Alone Standard (5G SA) network is the perfect solution. In an industry first, the private network is also completely independent from the public one, from the server and the core, to the antenna. The data also never leaves the Lufthansa base; it is processed directly on site using multi-access edge computing (MEC) that allows real-time data flow. The 5G frequencies for this project were allocated to Lufthansa Technik by the Federal Network Agency. As a service and technology partner, Vodafone supports the 5G network during both activation and operation.
Vinod Kumar, CEO, Vodafone Business
From factories, to ports and even airplane hangars, private 5G networks are flexible, scalable and can be tailored to their requirements, helping them achieve what they need.