Bell announced Tuesday that it has partnered with MacLean, a manufacturer of underground mining equipment, to install a private mobile network (PMN) utilizing the telco’s 5G/LTE network at the company’s research and training facility in Sudbury, Ontario.
The partnership is expected to provide enhanced safety, sustainable driving practices and reduced vehicle emissions, as well as accelerate research and development on mining vehicle automation, autonomy and interoperability.
“This Centre of Excellence serves as the foundation for MacLean’s mobile equipment research and development,” Bell said in a press release. “It enables the company’s mining vehicles to be more dependably controlled remotely, with real-time monitoring data to support rapid decision-making.
“Remote operations allow machines to work together better, maximizing the potential for the deployment of semi or fully autonomous mining, where underground excavations can be done safely by operators above ground,” it continued. “Remote operators can also monitor vehicles from a distance without lag, powered by Bell’s low-latency PMN.”
Mining is just one industry expected to benefit from the next generation of wireless networks that are said to be faster and, critically, have lower communications times so that real-time-operation-dependent use cases can flourish. That includes manufacturing, agriculture, autonomous vehicles and healthcare.
Photo provided by Bell
