Orange and Nokia Deploy Industry 4.0 4G/5G Private Network with Network Slicing

On Thursday, Orange and Nokia announced that the companies have deployed a 4G/5G private network combined with network slicing at Schneider Electric’s plant in Le Vaudreuil, France.

First Industry 4.0 Network, Powered by Orange and Nokia

The French telco partnered with Nokia to build a sliced 4G/5G private network for a modern industrial environment. At the Schneider plant, Orange will provide reliable, scalable and sustainable connectivity for industrial use cases. Incidentally, network slicing is a key feature to manage end-to-end 4G/5G quality-of-service and security in Industry 4.0. As such, Nokia’s slicing solution supports existing LTE, 5G SA and 5G NSA devices. The telecom vendor also said that its solutions include domain controller software in RAN, core and transport layers. This will also allow the companies to enable full slice connectivity.

This slice continuity between standards will allow Orange and Schneider to operate an indoor network. It also said that with the solution, the companies will implement and test how best they can manage the network. These includes managing priorities, performance, and security adapted to use cases, while optimizing network resources.

Arnaud Vamparys, Senior Vice President Radio Networks at Orange Innovation and 5G Champion, said, "thanks to Nokia’s advanced slicing technology, Orange is able to further explore with Schneider Electric the power of scalable private 4G/5G connectivity applied to industrial uses."

Tommi Uitto, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia, said, "as a long time innovation partner, Nokia is delighted to achieve this first with Orange in an industrial manufacturing environment."