Challenges of digital transformation for ports

Digital transformation of the ports and maritime sector is a complex evolution, involving everything from vessel to shore communications to autonomous cranes and the tracking of goods and assets through the use of IoT. Port operators need to track and communicate with hundreds of cargo carriers and vessels and thousands of employees in complex environments.

Data transfer on this scale is challenging and while dedicated 5G networks are available, typically only a small slice of the spectrum can be used, thus quickly hitting the limit, becoming overloaded and constraining the ability to scale these port networks.

ship to shore communications

Enabling complex maritime use cases

Traditional solutions such as fibre or public networks are expensive and hugely disruptive to operations. Public mobile networks don’t meet the ports’ privacy and network control requirements, nor provide a sufficiently strong or reliable enough signal to offer sustainable network capacity. To tackle these challenges and be prepared for more complex use cases that enable digital transformation, the best approach is a blend of different networks, with mmWave playing an integral role in delivering backhaul, transferring multi-gigabit amounts of data and accelerating network scaling.

5G maritime use cases

Multi-gigabit connectivity for scalable port networks

mmWave can transform the way ports work by providing multi-gigabit connectivity to support everything from connected sensors to small tools to large machinery, helping to deliver real-time insights, massive data offload and automation. This is ideal for catapulting operations to a 5G status and capability.

For port operations, this means improved efficiency, tracking and security across the site and allows operations teams to focus on the quality of service.

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  • Maritime use case

    Maritime use case

    To power digital transformation in the demanding maritime environment, the right network or combination of networks is needed. Read more on how this transformation can be powered by 5G mmWave.

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