Telefonica: Smart Energy Solution

The evolution of the Internet Of Things (IoT) and the rise in industrial automation are helping provide Smart Energy Solutions that can be applied to our everyday lives and industry.

Telefonica has launched a Smart Energy Solution for companies which aims to yield a deep understanding of energy usage in any building or location and to give advice of the actions to be taken.



The smart solution allows the remote and centralised measurement, control and management of high energy consumption equipment in any installation. The service especially focuses on high consumption points such as air conditioning, heating and lighting, providing control of a whole building or set of buildings.  Here is an example:

Some benefits of such a smart energy solution:

• Lower energy consumption and bill, by providing valuable information on critical points of consumption and possible improvements.
• Improved efficiency and obtain operational improvements by managing your energy infrastructure.
• Make better investment decisions based on data (return on investment).
• Centralised access to energy consumption informtion from all the infrastructures
• Reduced energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
• Improved energy operations due to a better knowledge of the functioning status of the facilities.
• Adapt the use of energy facilities to business needs by remote management and control of the equipment.
• Optimise the performance of the facilities by automating operations.

This service is geared to customers that have high energy consumption, especially three sectors; Industry, utilities and services (e.g. banking, hotels, retail, shopping centres). The service provides every required tool for building managers to lower energy consumption and achieve savings.

Vodafone and Ericsson develop ‘Industry 4.0’ factory in Germany

Automotive 5G manufacturing production is now a reality due to the efforts of Vodafone and Ericsson who were challenged by e.GO  to help them to develop an ‘industry 4.0’ factory to help them gain a competitive advantage through the use of mobile technology.

e.GO was founded by Professor Günther Schuh, often characterised as Germany’s answer to Elon Musk, who is very much on a mission to create more affordable electric vehicles. The company was founded out of RWTH Aachen University in 2015 where the Professor was vice-rector for Industry and Business Relations. By then he had already developed an electric delivery van, StreetScooter, a company that was bought by Deutsche Post in 2014.   Thanks to an array of StreetScooter vehicles and some 12,000 e-bikes and e-trikes, Deutsche Post DHL Group today operates the largest electric fleet in Germany.

Professor Schuh, now focusing on the 5G network believes it will deliver faster and more reliable production with constant access to relevant information:

"The assembly plant for e.GO Life is a true Industry 4.0 factory. In other words, it is fully networked in terms of information technology. Connectivity links the physical and the digital world.”

While according to Hannes Ametsreiter, Head of Vodafone Germany:

 "Our automotive industry needs a fast network directly where the newest and most innovative cars are built. Data is an important fuel for modern automobile production.”

While Arun Bansal, President and Head of Europe & Latin America, Ericsson, says:

 "5G is the key to opening the door to a new era in manufacturing productivity, speed, security and efficiency – and the automotive industry is a prime example of the beneficiaries. Our 5G technology leadership, including solutions and abilities specifically tailored to manufacturing, enables us to partner with companies such as Vodafone and e.GO to deliver the very best private networks solutions."

This 4.0 factory is a model that many other European companies might look to in the future. 

The 16,000m2 e.GO site in Aachen is one of the first in the world to connect machines using a private ‘5G ready’ network rather than Wi-Fi. There have been 36 mobile antenna installed within the factory walls to connect all the machinery to the IT system and to send data back to the company’s network operations centre, the factory’s brain.  The use of mobile technology provides e.GO’s development team with incredible power to analyse network data and automatically adjust factory processes with the press of a button. Mobile network slicing is being used for the first time in Germany to dedicate a slice of spectrum for the factory to ensure that critical manufacturing processes are never interrupted by inadvertent data packet loss. 

Another first is the use of multi-access edge computing (MEC) by the network to boost the processing power of the Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) which carry the chassis from station to station, replacing the classic production line. The factory will contain the world’s first AGVs to use 4G+ rather than Wi-Fi.

These machines process environmental data, like unexpected objects in their path, near instantaneously (less than 10 milliseconds), ensuring both they and all other machines in the plant adapt their routines accordingly. In the future the AGV will be joined by smart forklifts and smart factory trains which will transport material between warehouses and production halls.

The use of such technology has given e.GO’s development team incredible power to analyse network data and automatically adjust factory processes with the press of a button. When the team decided to move from a steel to an aluminum frame it took just three months to install new machinery and adjust processes, around a sixth of the time it would take a competitor to do the same.

The new e.GO electric car has taken just two years to develop, less than half the average time and has cost €70 million, four times less than the industry average development costs.

This is a revolutionary project which can pave the way for other European businesses. 

Ericsson Private Networks are capable of delivering gigabit bandwidth and latency of just a few milliseconds, for example in the newly announced @vodafone e.Go factory project. https://t.co/lqon6ulddh #MWC19 #Shanghai pic.twitter.com/EwgvQmw1Oj

— Ericsson (@ericsson) June 28, 2019

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• Swisscom brings Industry 4.0 to Ypsomed
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Swisscom brings Industry 4.0 to Ypsomed

Swisscom, Ericsson and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) initiated the “5G for Switzerland” programme in the summer of 2016 in order to carry out joint research in this new mobile telephony standard. Swisscom seeks to offer its customers the best infrastructure. Swisscom is working intensively on the development of 5G in order to make this latest technology available to its customers as early as possible. 5G will enable greater speed, greater capacities and shorter reaction times. The economy, science, industry as well as residential customers will benefit from it in equal measure.  Digitisation is also being worked on in the direction of Industry 4.0. In addition, Swisscom is promoting the further development of 4G and now provides 4G+ with speeds of up to 300 Mbit/s to 40% of the population; at the end of the year, it will be 67%. Swisscom already covers 15% of the population with speeds of up to 450 Mbit/s.

Ypsomed is the leading developer and manufacturer of injection and infusion systems for selfmedication and a renowned diabetes specialist with 30 years experience. As an innovation and technology leader, the company is the preferred partner of pharmaceutical and biotech companies for pens, auto-injectors and pump systems for administrating liquid medication. Ypsomed presents and distributes its product portfolios under the umbrella brand mylife Diabetescare directly to patients or via pharmacies and clinics, as well as under YDS Ypsomed Delivery Systems in business-to-business operations to pharmaceutical companies. The company is based in Burgdorf, Switzerland, and has a global network of production sites, subsidiaries and sales partners employing around 1300 staff worldwide

“It is of great value to us that we can attract Ypsomed as our first industrial partner for our "5G for Switzerland" programme. This will enable us to gain key insights into the digitisation of industry processes.” says Heinz Herren, CTO and CIO of Swisscom. 5G-specific features, such as extremely high bandwidths and long latency periods, are being tested. But they are also investigating aspects of wirelessly-networked production and its integrated data processing. Here, technology such as edge computing is being used for the first time. The cloud will become an integral component of a base station and control IT production processes both locally and directly. Ypsomed aims to gain experience of 5G technology early on in order to prepare for the new age of mobile-networked production. Ypsomed also aims to be able to benefit quickly from the economies of scale in production IT. “At Ypsomed, we are investing a lot in the digitisation of the injection systems and we see some great opportunities for growth. We want to fully exploit the potential for digitisation and apply it to all processes,” explains Ypsomed CEO Simon Michel about their collaboration with Swisscom.

Press Release
Swisscom 5G


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