Telekom launches innovative campus network activities in Hungary, Czech and Austria

Industrial automation and smart manufacturing have emerged as important trends to ensure manufacturing competitiveness across Europe.

Deutsche Telekom is now partnering with enterprises and universities in different European countries to develop and test new 5G applications for the factory of the future. This underscores the Deutsche Telekom group’s leading role to deliver innovative cellular connectivity solutions for the industry in Europe.

“Our aim is to help our enterprise customers wherever they are to take advantage of Industry 4.0 technologies based on our tailored campus network solutions,” says Antje Williams, SVG 5G Campus Networks, Deutsche Telekom. “We are excited that our campus network solution is now deployed at our customer BorgWarner in Hungary. And together with our national companies we look forward to the collaboration with local universities and partners on the research and co-creation of solutions for industry digitalization.”

A campus network is a combination of the public mobile network and a private network. Both networks jointly cover a defined company site, a university, or individual buildings.

Hungary: Campus network for a car supplier

Magyar Telekom and T-Systems Hungary have provided a campus network for automotive component supplier BorgWarner. At the site of BorgWarner Oroszlány Ltd. this solution is being tested under real-world manufacturing conditions for the first time in Hungary and in the central European region.

The first areas of application are intra-logistics (Barcode-reading, automated material handling), manufacturing control (PLC data connection) and production monitoring. The campus network is based on wLTE but could be upgraded to 5G in the future.

Czech Republic: MoU with the Technical University of Ostrava

T-Mobile Czech Republic a.s. and VŠB - Technical University of Ostrava (VŠB-TUO) will sign a memorandum for the rollout of the first campus network in the Czech Republic. The network will cover a part of the university campus and will be part of testbed platform focused on digitized production and demonstration of the Industry 4.0 principles.

VŠB-TUO is currently completing the construction of a building that is part of a testbed housing a Smart Factory - digital workplace with robotics components, autonomous transportation and utilization of Industry 4.0 elements. Integral part of the infrastructure complex will be a private campus network to be deployed by T-Mobile. It is scheduled to be operational in the second quarter of 2020 and with further expansion to follow after the launch.

Austria: research partnership with Graz University of Technology

Magenta Telekom and Graz University of Technology will open Austria's first 5G campus network for scientific and industrial purposes in the first half of 2020. The "smartfactory@tugraz" research and learning factory will be equipped with 5G technology from Magenta Telekom. This connects machines and planning processes digitally and in real time.

Together with 19 partners, an industrial 5G learning and research environment for the digital integration of state-of-the-art production facilities is being created at Graz University of Technology on an area of 320 sqm. For this purpose, a complete industrial production chain will be set up.

This includes a production line with robot arms, metal 3D printing, robotics for different applications, edge computing, wRFID applications, as well as wInternet of Things and machine-to-machine applications. In cooperation with Magenta Telekom, this research landscape is now also becoming a research environment for 5G applications with a research focus on "Remote Services in Industrial Manufacturing".