Vodafone has announced its new Mobile Private Network (MPN) offering, becoming the first telecoms operator in the UK to standardise a 5G Standalone MPN product and its approach to deliver across the lifecycle of the solution.
MPNs allow businesses and organisations to customise network performance and characteristics to suit their own connectivity needs. This has great potential to accelerate digitisation and act as a catalyst for economic growth across the UK.
By installing dedicated equipment on-site, the customer can tailor the connectivity experience as only its own devices and applications can connect to the network. MPNs remove risk of network congestion, while network functionality can be customised to use case requirements and security is enhanced as data never needs to leave the customer premise.
MPNs can offer significant benefits across several industries, including manufacturing, healthcare and transport and logistics. MPNs are set up to enable use cases such as asset tracking, drone detection, machine-to-machine connectivity, condition monitoring, augmented and virtual reality and many more.
Most importantly, an MPN allows the creation of services with specialist requirements that would not be possible on the public network.
“Mobile Private Networks are an opportunity for our business customers to accelerate innovation at an unprecedented scale,” said Nick Gliddon, business director, Vodafone UK. “By installing a private and customisable network, Vodafone can support innovation by cultivating new use cases in an environment which brings the best opportunity. That could be delivering on low latency requirements, enhanced security or enabling massive-IoT models. Whatever the use case, Vodafone can deliver a tailored experience to act as a catalyst for innovation.”
Vodafone’s MPN offering includes indoor & outdoor Radio Access Network (RAN) infrastructure for private connectivity, 5G non-standalone and 5G SA connectivity, dependent on use case requirements; on-site network core infrastructure or access to Vodafone’s core network, including ability integrate and utilise Vodafone’s Multi-access Edge Compute (MEC) solutions; if required, MPN can also be connected to Vodafone’s wider public network; management platform to visualise data across the network and connected applications, optimise and reconfigure network operations and parameters, provision new services and automate functions, applications and operations; enhanced cybersecurity, with customer sites being managed by the same cyber security team that protects Vodafone’s wider network operations; on-going managed services, including 24/7 helpdesk, data insight and analysis, real-time monitoring and early warning intelligence as well upgrades and maintenance advice and support; support to develop use cases and integrate enabling technologies, such as cloud services and IoT solutions.
