Nokia lands Europe's largest industrial private 5G network

According to the Finnish telecoms giant, the private 5G network covers 55,000m² across the site where ASN makes submarine cables for communication service providers, public cloud providers and others who want to connect infrastructure across oceans.

The Nokia network core is deployed at a small dedicated data center near the factory in Calais in a move ASN said would help "reduce latencies".

The network spans 11 buildings, a deck, and an underground tunnel through which the cable is routed to go from the factory and storage tanks to vessels. With 55 Nokia remote radio heads deployed indoors, and two further deployed outdoors, the duo claimed that "anyone can be connected anywhere, at any place, or on any floor of the factory".

Tom Richter, head of Nokia’s manufacturing business, said the 5G network will eventually provide low latency data transfer to support real-time quality control during the manufacturing process.

He added: “When you start to deal with real-time data, it is mission critical, and for this you need a 5G network. Currently, the network is providing round-trip data transfers in less than 10 milliseconds - the goal is to reach latencies below 5 milliseconds."