The Hamburg Port Authority has announced that it has agreed to collaborate with Deutsche Telekom and Nokia in the testing of 5G applications in the city's port.
It has been disclosed that testing of key aspects of 5G functionality which includes network slicing will be conducted at a pre-selected 8000 hectare area at the German port in order to gain further knowledge, expertise and experience from a real-world industrial environment.
In addition to this, it has been disclosed that 5G will be tested on use cases ranging from traffic light management to data processing from mobile sensors and VR. In order to enhance connectivity at the port, an antenna has been installed on the Hamburg television tower at a height of more than 150 meters.
The Hamburg Port has been identified as a perfect location to carry out industrial 5G testing because it is both a logistics hub and a tourist hotspot. It provides the ideal environment for testing on the aforementioned use cases that place a big demand on 5G networks.
Port authority officials have stated that they want to use mobile communications to manage its traffic lights system within the port area. It also wants to utilize the collection and processing of real-time data provided by environmental measurement. The project partners are testing if these services, each of which have specific network demands, are reliably working on just one mobile network infrastructure.
Board Member for technology and innovation at Deutsche Telekom, Claudia Nemat, described the project as hugely important in its effort to learn more about 5G, and expressed her belief that the initiative can help accelerate the development of the next-generation technology.
She said, "This testbed in Hamburg is an important development step along the road to 5G. We need practical experience which we can get in the Port of Hamburg. Our goal is to understand how we can best adapt our network to customer requirements. The production industry and the logistics sector, in particular, are going to reap the benefits of 5G as a powerful lever for many applications."
CEO of Hamburg Port Authority, Jens Meier, expressed his delight at the collaboration agreement declaring that the project would execute its aims which would subsequently benefit the entire city of Hamburg.
He said, "5G offers a level of security, reliability and speed never seen before in mobile networks. HPA is opening up completely new use cases. We can start gathering experience of this cutting-edge technology right now and shape the standard. This is going to benefit the whole city of Hamburg, not just the port."