Vodafone UK has been named the ‘operator with the best 5G industry deployment’ at 5G Week Awards.
The award came as a result of Vodafone’s ongoing collaboration with Ford, with which it is helping to build an E:PriME (Electrified Powertrain in Manufacturing Engineering) ‘Factory of the Future’ in Dunton, Essex. For its part, Vodafone is supplying a private 5G network that will improve the performance of welding machines on the car manufacturer’s electric vehicle line. This is expected to speed up the production process and improve security when it finally goes live some time in the autumn.
Ford and Vodafone are members of the 5G Enhanced Manufacturing project, which is part of the UK’s 5G Testbeds and Trials program. Insights learned from the Dunton site will be shared with the wider industry, and will contribute towards the development of industry standards.
The award also acknowledged Vodafone’s work with European airline Lufthansa. Back in February, it was announced that Lufthansa Technik and Vodafone Business had built a standalone private 5G campus network at a Lufthansa air hanger site at Hamburg Airport.
With a capacity of more than one gigabit per second and latency times of less than ten milliseconds, Vodafone’s 5G private network is capable of facilitating the servicing of up to four very large aircrafts at a time.
There was more good news for Vodafone at the 5G Week Awards when Oracle won the award for ‘Best OSS/BSS deployment enabling 5G’, which it achieved for its Service and Network Orchestration with Vodafone UK.
Among the other three awards of the night, Blu Wireless and Broadway Partners picked up ‘The most significant vertical sector deployment by a vendor’. Elsewhere, AutoAir won Most Innovative use of 5G Technology, and Ofcom’s Philip Marnick won ‘The leading individual ‘champion’ of 5G’.
The 2020 5G Week Awards were decided by an independent panel of judges from across the 5G industry. The event had the backing of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, as well as UK5G.
Jon has nine years experience of writing and editing copy for leading publications, as well as attending technology shows and events and conducting interviews. Currently working with 5G.co.uk, TechRadar, Trusted Reviews, T3, Digital Spy, What Mobile, Pocket Gamer, and The Gadget Show.
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