Basque Government installs the first 5G MPN network in a Technology Park in Spain at the Vitoria-Gasteiz Campus

In partnership with Vodafone, which will deploy a 5G MPN private mobile network with ultrafast broadband access.

The deployment of the operator’s private 5G network will facilitate the development, in a unique environment, of industrial use cases in IoT, robotics and AI (Artificial Intelligence) to take advantage of all the benefits offered by this technology.

The operation is part of the Basque Government’s Strategic Investment Plan, which includes an investment of 2.5 million euros to promote 5G technology.

The Vitoria-Gasteiz Campus of the Euskadi Technology Park will become a “5G Living Lab” from which the development of this technology will be promoted as a tool for building the digital economy and society of the coming years.

The Basque Government has presented the first link in its “data value chain”, which will mark the development of the Basque economy in the coming years. This is the installation of a Private Mobile Network – MPN 5G at the Vitoria-Gasteiz Campus of the Euskadi Technology Park, the first in Spain to offer this service and ultra-fast broadband access to business professionals and visitors.

The initiative is part of the Basque Government’s Strategic Investment Plan 2022-2024, which includes an investment of 2.5 million euros for the development of Infrastructures for Data (5G). Specifically, it is part of the commitment to the development of smart industry -within the RIS3 strategy and the PCTI 2030-, with special attention to the industrial sector. It also responds to the strategy of the Euskadi Technology Park to transform its different campuses into cutting-edge smart infrastructures.

The network has been installed by Vodafone, whose MPN network guarantees the application of all the capabilities of 5G private mobile networks in a unique industrial environment, making the most of the capabilities they offer for the promotion of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT) and robotics, applied to industrial processes.

5G Living Lab

The presentation of the MPN 5G network took place this morning at the Vitoria-Gasteiz Campus of the Euskadi Technology Park, as part of an information day attended by Estibaliz Hernaez, Deputy Minister of Technology, Innovation and Digital Transformation of the Basque Government. In her opening speech, Hernaez said that, with the launch of the network, “a decisive step is being taken to build the digital economy and society of the coming years” and pointed out “the suitability of the Vitoria-Gasteiz Campus as a 5G laboratory due to the concentration of industrial, energy and technology companies that will benefit from it, and the presence of SMEs and agents specialising in digitisation, industrial IoT and 5G experimentation”.

Likewise, from her perspective as President of the Basque Technology Park, Estibaliz Hernáez expressed her satisfaction with this initiative, “which contributes to making our commitment to Parke Smart a reality, a cutting-edge place for companies and professionals where they will find everything they need to shape their business projects, and where – in addition to smart digitisation – they have at their disposal all the differential services offered by Parke in different areas, from infrastructure to networking or the ecosystem of life of professionals”.

Fran Vallejo, territorial director of Vodafone in the Basque Country, stressed that “this project continues the work carried out by Vodafone to promote private mobile network technology, which will have a decisive impact on various sectors with great potential for digitisation, along with the development of other technological patents such as Big Data, artificial intelligence (AI) or the internet of things (IoT). Once again, the drive of Vodafone, its collaborators and its research team based at the Malaga hub for the development of the most innovative digital solutions that favour the intelligent management of processes, applied to businesses and people to make their day-to-day lives easier, is once again evident”.

Innovative project

After the institutional presentation, the conference included an informative presentation on Mobile Private Networks (MPN) and on the solution implemented at the Vitoria-Gasteiz Campus, which was given by Ainhoa Pérez, head of IoT at Vodafone North. Subsequently, the success stories of Basque CCAM and Inzu Group were presented and the event ended with a round table on the use of MPN in companies in which, together with these two companies and Vodafone, Eurocybar participated. The round table was moderated by Miren Bilbao, manager of the Euskadi Technology Park in Araba.

As highlighted at the conference, one of the main benefits of these private mobile networks (MPN) is the guarantee of service levels with high speeds and minimum latency in an uninterrupted and ultra-reliable manner, maintaining high levels of security through exclusive and controlled access. At the same time, they ensure self-management and guarantee network density, making it possible to connect thousands of devices included in a production plant without any loss of service and becoming a key solution in industrial environments.

The project, developed in just 12 weeks, has involved the collaboration of numerous vendors and partners of the telco, and is groundbreaking on several fronts. First, because it is the first commercial MPN deployment with a 5G Stand Alone core from Athonet (the operator’s regular supplier of MPN solutions); second, because it is the first private mobile network to leverage the capabilities of the multi-operator core network (MOCN) in coordination with the public radio access network (RAN); and, above all, because it is the first private mobile network to be managed by the operator. And, above all, because it is the first private mobile network managed by the MPN Domain Assurance team that Vodafone has created in Malaga.

As a sign of the growing relevance of this technology and following data from a report prepared by Economist Impact and published in collaboration with NTT, it is worth noting that around 24% of organisations are already testing private internet and more than half have plans to deploy a private 5G network. These figures speak for themselves not only of the exponential growth of these networks, but also of the interest and functionalities they can bring to the market.