Nokia debuts enhanced Industrial 5G fieldrouter

Nokia is enhancing its range of ruggedized user equipment for use in hazardous, flammable, explosive and dusty environments. The company is introducing enhanced versions of Nokia Industrial 5G fieldrouter and Nokia XR20 smartphone created by HMD Global, for 4.9G and 5G networks, to allow oil and gas companies and other industries to maintain vital connectivity of their workforce and machines.

The digital transformation of industries is driven not just by the need to boost productivity and efficiency, but also to protect teams and the environment. For instance, it’s essential to keep workers connected at a remote oil drilling platform, chemical processing plant, dusty mine, or any other hazardous environments. *ATEX, *IECEx, *NEC500 and *UL detail the requirements for making equipment safe to use in those locations where flammable chemicals are being used and where explosions could occur.

The ruggedized Nokia XR20 has been enhanced in collaboration with HMD Global to meet the requirements of operating in hazardous environments. With applications such as Nokia Team Comms or Group Communications on the smartphones, workers can interact using push-to-talk and video. Nokia Industrial 5G fieldrouters and Nokia XR20 Industrial edition phones are ATEX and IECEx certified and Nokia XR20 Industrial edition is also NEC500 and UL certified to meet the protection requirements of countries across the globe.

Nokia pioneering Industrial 5G fieldrouters solve the issue of connecting legacy industrial equipment and vehicles to the private wireless network to allow enterprises to benefit from Industry 4.0 use cases such as autonomous operations at mines, ports and factories. Now equipped with integrated enclosures, oil and gas companies can use the Industrial fieldrouters to connect autonomous vehicles in hazardous areas or collect environmental and other types of data from machines connected by fieldrouters over the private wireless network.

Jaime Laguna, Global Head of Oil and Gas and Mining for Nokia, said: “Nokia is committed to delivering end-to-end private wireless solutions for enterprises and allowing workers to communicate in the most intuitive, secure and safe ways, especially in demanding hazardous environments. We are pleased to enhance our portfolio of ruggedized devices to meet these specific industry demands for safe connectivity.”

Sebastian Ulrich, Managing Director Global Enterprise Business for HMD Global, said: “We are looking forward to working closely with Nokia to provide end to end solutions in demanding hazardous environments. The Nokia XR20 Industrial edition allows vital and secure communication for workers in these remote locations.

By implementing the Nokia Digital Automated Cloud (DAC) private wireless platform, customers can leverage the recently launched Nokia Connectivity Operations Dashboard, which extends the Nokia Industrial device management. This will provide the tools they require to track and gain visibility into device and network health without the need to deploy a separate solution.

Nokia Industrial device management supports zero-touch onboarding of Nokia Industrial smartphones, handhelds and IoT devices on the network. Management can be scaled to thousands of devices, allowing customers to apply policies and permissions by groups and update and patch devices remotely. Further, by subscribing to Nokia Network Digital Twin in addition to Nokia Connectivity Operations Dashboard, customers will benefit from real-time monitoring of the network as experienced by the devices. This will provide capabilities such as anomaly detection and prediction of future behaviour, allowing users to see the impact of planned changes ahead of real-world implementation.