Press Release

The Un-carrier has earned its wings! Valmont Industries Inc. and T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) today announced the completion of an industry-first long-distance BVLOS drone inspection flight enabled by 5G.

Traditional methods for infrastructure monitoring typically require extensive manpower, manned aircraft operations or ground-based inspections, which involve significant safety risks, more time and more money.

But not anymore ― especially now that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is granting more waivers for BVLOS drone operations. And as one of the first companies in the U.S. to receive said waiver, Valmont is ahead of the game.

In under three hours, Valmont accomplished a non-stop 77-mile drone mission from Childress to Aspermont, Texas inspecting vital infrastructure like power lines, railroads, bridges and more. The drone used a Harris Aerial H6E drone equipped with a T-Mobile 5G connected Sony A7RM5 camera. Significantly faster and more fuel efficient, this task was three times faster than conventional methods, while using less than two gallons of fuel.

Mission highlights:

Valmont drone inspection teams used less than one-fourth gallon of fuel per hour.
Flight pushes average distance of UAS inspections from less than 20 miles per day to more than 60.
Even though the route was very rural, T-Mobile 5G provided live data transfer throughout the three-hour flight.
The Sony A7RM5 combined with the ability to fly closely to utility lines, provided high-resolution details for critical infrastructure inspection.
The flight proves that drones are a viable, safe, and efficient alternative to helicopters for infrastructure.
Harris Aerial’s drone and Valmont’s proprietary payload are fully National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) compliant.

“Range has been a hurdle in the drone inspection space, until now,” said Jake Lahmann, UAS Manager at Valmont Industries Inc. “To be able to get this kind of range in a single drone flight is really going to revolutionize the way the industry approaches infrastructure inspections.”

“5G was built to make life easier,” added Ulf Ewaldsson, President of Technology at T-Mobile. “Whether it’s connecting a person on their smartphone or improving long-range drone infrastructure inspections, there is no doubt that the reach and speed of T-Mobile 5G is making it possible for entire industries to revolutionize the way they work.”

With 5G, Valmont’s drone inspection service is another example of 5G-enabled technologies that can be used to quickly respond to or prevent an emergency. By preemptively monitoring infrastructure sites with greater accuracy, Valmont can help prevent malfunctions and breakdowns before they have a chance to have a widespread impact.

Working closely with the FAA on BVLOS drone operation policies, Valmont plans to offer drone-in-a-box (DiaB) services nationwide in 2024. This enables anyone needing aerial inspection services the ability to order a drone, unbox it and watch it run its inspection while a Valmont pilot flies it remotely from virtually anywhere in the U.S.

T-Mobile is the leader in 5G, delivering the country’s largest, fastest and most awarded 5G network. The Un-carrier’s 5G network covers 326 million people across two million square miles — more than AT&T and Verizon combined. 275 million people nationwide are covered by T-Mobile’s super-fast Ultra Capacity 5G, and the Un-carrier plans to reach 300 million people with Ultra Capacity this year — nearly everyone in the country. T-Mobile 5G is available on all T-Mobile phone plans.

What does the future hold for T-Mobile and connected drones? Join the US telecoms sector in discussion at Connected America 2024

Also in the news:
More than two-thirds of U.S. commercial sites have no optical fibre access
Viasat completes Inmarsat merger deal
EXATEL talks expansion into subsea connectivity sector

News

Germany’s competition regulator, the Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Office), will explore whether Vodafone has directly or indirectly hindered 1&1’s rollout of 5G radio equipment

The Bundeskartellamt has announced that it will launch an investigation into Vodafone and its infrastructure subsidiary Vantage Towers, seeking to ascertain whether they have illegally impeded rival 1&1’s rollout of mobile services.

1&1 signed an agreement to piggyback on Vantage Towers’ mobile site infrastructure back in 2021, using the pre-existing infrastructure to significantly expand the reach of its burgeoning 5G network.

However, Vantage Towers’ rollout of additional tower infrastructure in Germany has been significantly delayed over the past year, potentially leaving 1&1 unable to fulfil its own rollout obligations.

“Powerful and dominant companies must not unfairly impede other companies. We will therefore scrutinise whether there are sound reasons for a delay in the provision of antenna locations for 1&1,” Andreas Mundt, president of the Federal Cartel Office, said in a statement.

1&1 is Germany’s newest national mobile operator, won 5G spectrum at auction in 2019. Since then, the operator has been gradually rolling out its own infrastructure across the country in anticipation of its commercial 5G launch later this year.

However, in order to reach the rollout targets as prescribed by the terms of its 5G licence, 1&1 needed the scale up its rollout quickly. As a result, the newcomer partnered with Vodafone’s tower spin-off Vantage Towers at the end of 2021, with the partners saying they expected 1&1 to be able to use the initial 3,800 rooftop and ground-based sites by the end of 2025, as well as over a thousand additional sites set to be built in 2022.

In reality, Vantage Tower’s rollout of additional sites has progressed far slower than expected, with 1&1 able to announce just five operational 5G sites earlier this year, compared to its target of 1,000.

As such, the new operator launched a formal complaint to the Bundeskartellamt, suggesting that Vantage and parent company Vodafone had failed to live up to their side of the agreement, presenting 1&1 with “ongoing obstacles” to their 5G rollout.

“The provision of the agreed locations was massively delayed and continues to be delayed,” noted the Bundeskartellamt in a statement.

The regulator noted that these sites would be imperative for the effective launch of 1&1’s commercial 5G services, scheduled to take place later this year.

The findings of this investigation will be crucial for 1&1, with the company facing its own investigation from the Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency) for having failed to reach its obligated rollout goals. If the Bundeskartellamt ultimately agrees that Vantage Towers has significantly hindered 1&1’s rollout capabilities, it seems unlikely that the Bundesnetzagentur would financially penalise 1&1 for its missed targets.

On the other hand, if the regulator does move forward with fining 1&1, the cost could be up to €50,000 per missing base station, suggesting 1&1 could be looking at a bill for just under €50 million.

Want to keep up with all of the latest news from the German telecoms market? Join the operators in discussion at this year’s Connected Germany event

Also in the news:
More than two-thirds of U.S. commercial sites have no optical fibre access
Viasat completes Inmarsat merger deal
EXATEL talks expansion into subsea connectivity sector

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Press Release

The 5G Open Innovation Lab (5G OI Lab) along with ecosystem partners F5, GXC and Spirent Communications announced a new collaboration to showcase a leading-edge enterprise Private Mobile Network (PMN) solution that not only delivers PMNs in hard-to-reach locations, but offers greater security, control, and resilience with improvements to operational costs.

As 5G infrastructure becomes more mainstream, enterprises and organizations are subsequently deploying more private networks and telco clouds into strategic locations to leverage newly available connectivity, lower latency, and agility. The consistent throughput and capacity on these PMNs bring the promise of 5G to revenue-driven use cases such as IoT and network slicing, while being mindful that security must expand accordingly beyond legacy policies and be thoroughly tested. Especially in edge use cases, one of the requirements most in demand is the need for local breakout to route traffic to as part of a Mobile Edge Compute (MEC) infrastructure or hosted within a data center.

F5, a hybrid and multi-cloud application services and security company, deployed carrier-grade BIG-IP Virtual Editions. These security functions were consolidated with an N6/SGi-LAN solution adding another layer of speed and security at the network level. Critical functions such as Firewall, DDoS, Secure DNS, CGNAT, TCP and Video Optimization with this consolidated N6 configuration are already running in high-volume Tier 1 providers.

GXC, a NaaS communications early-stage tech company which is part of the 5G OI Lab ecosystem, contributed their unique distributed mesh configuration for easier and faster deployment of a private network while providing full coverage and capacity of a cellular network.

This collaboration was validated using Spirent’s Landslide test and emulation platform. The multinational telecom testing company’s solution provided device and RAN emulation to create a diversity of traffic flows across multiple data networks through the 5G core which is monitored and managed by F5 behind the UPF. This delivers UE QoS, Network Slice Management, and offers multi-application monitoring at scale to validate the benefits of a packet core and N6 LAN solution working in tandem in a controlled production environment.

Finally, the entire solution was pressure-tested through technology made available through the 5G OI Lab and its enterprise and operator partners deployed with GXC’s ONYX Portal.

How the solution works:

-F5’s BIG-IP Virtual Editions will optimize these traffic flows between the 5GC and the content network helping to enable end-to-end visibility of user activity and security against unwarranted traffic ingress.

-Spirent’s Landslide AMF Nodal application will bring real-world traffic modelling into the 5G OI Lab to emulate 5G Mobile subscribers and 5G Access Nodes (gNBs) performing a realistic distribution of traffic flows across slices and DNNs towards emulated content servers supported by the core.

About GXC

GXC, previously known as GenXComm, is an Austin, Texas-based company that provides groundbreaking technology for enterprise 5G networks, based on a cellular mesh architecture. This private network platform provides high levels of resiliency, flexible deployments, strong coverage in hard-to-reach areas, and a powerful distributed application platform. The company was founded in 2016 to commercialize years of research and development in interference technology out of the University of Texas at Austin. Enabling full-duplex, high-speed communication, GXC’s powerful technology has the capacity to double the world’s available frequency spectrum. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter and contact us here for inquiries.

About Spirent

Spirent Communications plc. (LSE: SPT) is a leading global provider of automated test and assurance solutions for networks, cybersecurity, and positioning. The company provides innovative products, services and managed solutions that address the test, assurance, and automation challenges of a new generation of technologies, including 5G, cloud, autonomous vehicles and beyond. From the lab to the real world, Spirent helps companies deliver on their promise to their customers of a new generation of connected devices and technologies. For more information, please visit www.spirent.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

About 

The 5G Open Innovation Lab is a new global innovation ecosystem that brings together multi-stage startups, enterprise and global technology platforms and investors to connect and collaborate on developing disruptive new enterprise technologies and solutions that capitalize on the power of edge computing connected to public and private 5G networks.

In just four years, the Lab has attracted a roster of world-class corporate and industry partners including Accenture, Amdocs, Avanade, Dell Technologies, Deloitte, Ericsson, F5, GAF (Standard Industries), Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, Palo Alto Networks, SK Telecom, Spirent, T-Mobile and VMware as well as 101 multi-stage enterprise startups who have collectively raised $1.641B of venture capital. Through 5G OI Lab’s unique model of open collaborative innovation, corporate partners work directly with ecosystem startups to accelerate commercialization through proof of concept, go-to-market, and other engagements and opportunities.

F5 and BIG-IP are trademarks, service marks, or tradenames of F5, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. The use of the words “partner,” “partnership,” or “joint” does not imply a legal partnership relationship between F5 and any other company.