New global alliance for 5G industrial applications

Formed in early April, the 5G Alliance for Connected Industries and Automation (5G-ACIA) is a global forum for collaboration between automation, engineering, and process industries on the one hand, and telecom operators and suppliers on the other. The alliance also includes several scientific institutes.

The amount of wireless data transmitted by machines and sensors in factories is increasing rapidly and the very high bandwidth and ultra-low latency of 5G technology can add a lot of value in this scenario.

Mats Norin, Program Manager 5G for Industries, at Ericsson, says: 5G will help evolve many industries and the development of the technology supports the need for multi-purpose solutions driven by the variety of use cases. We need to create the ecosystems that are required for early adoption, and new partnerships and alliances, such as 5G-ACIA, are essential to this process.”

According to the chairman of 5G-ACIA, Andreas Müller, the alliance brings together important players in the fields of Internet of Things and smart factories for the first time and will make it possible to align 5G with the needs of industries worldwide.

Ericsson has a seat on the board, holds the vice-chairman position and chairs one of the most important working groups called Technology and Architecture. In addition to Ericsson, the 26 founding members include German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Bosch, Huawei, Infineon, Intel, Mitsubishi, Nokia, Siemens, Vodafone, and Yokogawa.

5G-ACIA is the latest collaborative effort that Ericsson helped initiate to develop 5G technologies based on real business needs. The company itself is a major manufacturer of advanced equipment and Ericsson factories around the world continuously test 5G-enabled technologies.

Earlier this year, Ericsson released a report on the industry impact of 5G (gated content) that shares insights from over 900 companies across 10 different industries. The report revealed that trials of 5G use cases will start this year, after which activities will ramp up quickly, with over 70 percent of companies aiming to have use cases in production by 2021. Manufacturing, energy and utilities, public transport, and financial services are the sectors most likely to have use cases in production by 2020.