NETWORKS & COMMS
need to deploy a spectrum band – and most countries where mining is a major industry have 4G only spectra. Finally, the 5G networks and devices carry a premium and unless you can justify it based on the resulting increase in performance or productivity, it doesn’ t make sense.”
You have to look at it with a broad mind. Many nuclear power plants are still using legacy systems based on floppy disks and IBM mainframes. They want something trusted that has been used for decades.“ Utility is the same – they really trust 4G so are reluctant to try 5G and want all the bugs to be ironed out first. Mining is the same – it is conservative but also mission critical, especially in relation to worker safety. The immediate need for 5G in industry has been in discrete manufacturing, with very automated, complex and high speed processes.”
At Nokia, the term is 4.9G not 4G. With 3G and 4G roughly every year you get a new release. Release 14 for 4G was 4.9G just before 5G appeared. But 4.9G and a few releases before that still had a huge improvement over standard 4G, making it much more industrial centric with a lot more features and capabilities. When you compare 4G to WiFi, there is already a major gap – there are a lot of things you are already do today that were not possible with WiFi.
In China, 5G seems to be everywhere in mining – what is Nokia’ s view on this?“ There is no doubt the Chinese are quite advanced in connectivity but at the same time their definition of a private wireless network is quite different to elsewhere. For us it is a fully standalone network at a minesite. In China it could just consist of a few antennas in a certain part of the mine with the rest of the mine using the main network from China Mobile or another WiFi provider. In addition, Chinese 5G often uses slicing, where the data goes out of a small virtual network and comes in again – different to a sitewide private network.”
What about the telecomms companies – often it is them selling private networks to mines using Nokia or other technology. How does this collaboration work?“ You are right in many cases the mobile network operator sell private wireless solutions to enterprise customers. But in Nokia’ s case we decided that many of them were not ready to do this as they did not fundamentally understand the technology. So in the beginning we were selling 100 % direct to mining operators. As the business grew, we knew that we had to work with partners but we have done this via a partner network, which includes some mobile operators( Communications Service Providers) but also a lot of systems integrators( SIs) – companies like DXC, Kyndryl, Infosys and others.”
However, in industrial markets Nokia also works with specialist SIs and mining is a good example – these include Ambra Solutions in Canada, Sedna in South Africa and Challenge Networks in Australia.“ So for Nokia I would say overall our route to market for private networks in industry is 30 % mainstream SIs, 30 % the CSPs and the remainder the specialist SIs.”
Why are mining groups investing in private networks in much greater numbers? Is it being driven by more autonomous fleets? Daeuble:“ Mining is a very interesting segment for us as it has a lot of interesting use cases. Of course things like autonomous haulage are important and have played a major role. But connecting the workers via voice and video is actually a really top priority as reliable comms are so critical in mines especially in relation to safety but also maintenance. Safety itself is also important in terms of things like biometric modelling, fatigue monitoring etc. And then you have technologies now that have similarities to autonomy but also require low latency – collision avoidance and remote control equipment for example. Then you have situational awareness – real time monitoring of the situation in the plant including video connection, plus predictive maintenance via thousands of sensors on pumps, conveyor belts etc.”
He added that use of drones also requires reliable connectivity and they are increasingly used for stockpile monitoring and other tasks. Open pit and tailings dam slope stability monitoring via radar stations and LiDARs is another important area, as is overall site security such as perimeter cameras. Mines are becoming more digital very fast, and private networks are the only technology able to handle it.“ Satcomms might be enough for connectivity in a small scale operation but not for a large site. Beyond the mine itself, you might have a rail line taking concentrate from pit to port – some of these mining rail lines now use autonomous trains, and these require private wireless network coverage as well.”
Nokia has done a lot of work on private wireless network ROI for the mining industry with all the data it has from deployments – at some operations it pays for itself in a matter of days or weeks, especially with a lot of use cases at one site. And once it is installed, you can keep on adding more things to it –“ we like to say it is a gift that keeps on giving. It is helping the mines become safer, more efficient and more sustainable.”
Finally how do the deployments come about – what are the catalysts?“ The sales part of it can come from many different directions. It could be Komatsu or Sandvik or somebody else installing a fleet of autonomous machines and telling the customer now you need a private wireless
network. Another driver could be an accident or incident that drives installation of a technology. Or it could just be a new Industry 4.0 initiative. And the speed of deployments has gone up because mining is a small world and when a mine installs a private wireless networks and gets notable efficiency improvements, you can be sure that competitor mines sit up and take notice.”
Finally a note on MX Context, which Nokia launched during the MWC event.“ In mines we have a lot of real time data now coming through, both from new and legacy systems. A lot of this data is still siloed and also viewed in a siloed way. But people,
IM Editorial Director Paul Moore with Stephane Daeuble, Nokia Head of Solution Marketing – Enterprise Solutions at MWC 2025
especially supervisors and managers, want to see the big picture and have data access and visualisation all in one place. The solution to this is sensor fusion, and that is what we have done with MX Context. You can group sensor data based on what you want to do, and then use AI to build knowledge on that data set, then you have an interface to give you insight into that data. And thanks to private wireless you can then take action on that data in real time as well.”
One example of MX Context usage is in tracking and positioning of workers, machines, components and other materials in an underground mine – Nokia can combine multiple tracking technologies into
30 International Mining | SEPTEMBER 2025