Verizon Business on Wednesday announced that it is working with Associated British Ports (ABP) to deploy private 5G at the Port of Southampton.
Delivered in partnership with Nokia, Verizon’s private 5G platform will provide one of the United Kingdom’s busiest ports with a secure, low-latency private network connection.
ABP operates a network of 21 ports, including the Port of Southampton. Acting as the UK’s number one port responsible for £40 billion in exports from the UK every year, the Port of Southampton provides a critical link in supply chains serving businesses and manufacturers throughout the nation.
The deployment will not only address the immediate problem of loss of onsite data communications as a result of poor wifi connectivity, but the advanced capabilities of private 5G, specifically its reliability, throughput, security and ultra low latency can help enable the use of new technologies such as real-time analytics, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine Learning. In turn, this can help with the enablement of new service advancements including asset tracking, autonomous guided vehicles, workflow management, predictive maintenance and safety monitoring in the near future.
Verizon Business announced the launch of its international private 5G platform for global enterprises located in Europe and Asia-Pacific in October 2020. This solution, currently delivered in partnership with Nokia, will enable businesses to deploy a private industrial grade dedicated 5G network capability within their premises. The network is on Nokia Digital Automation Cloud, an application platform providing high-bandwidth, low-latency, hyper-fast private wireless connectivity and local edge computing.
Tami Erwin, CEO, Verizon Business
Along with Nokia, we have been able to equip ABP to take advantage of the immediate benefits private 5G offers, and most importantly prepare the Port of Southampton to take full advantage of new technology applications and real-time analytics which will digitally transform its services in the future.
Henrik L. Pedersen, ABP Chief Executive Officer
Building flexible and resilient technology platforms to meet our customers’ needs is a key element of our strategy, and becoming the first mainland port operator in the UK to offer a private 5G network to our customers is a fantastic milestone for ABP.
