Latest / Best of Business / Mark Beder: Spark New Zealand customer director for enterprise and government explains private 5G warehouse project

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Mark Beder: Spark New Zealand customer director for enterprise and government explains private 5G warehouse project · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: Now, how cool is this? Spark has built the first
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  Speaker 2: private five G network in the country. It's for Air
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  Speaker 2: New Zealand. It's in Air New Zealand's large logistics warehouse,
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  Speaker 2: and the network is now being used by drones and
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  Speaker 2: robots in order to do regular stock takes that are
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  Speaker 2: just really too hard for humans to do. Mark Beider
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  Speaker 2: is Spark's customer director for Enterprise and Government. Mark.
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  Speaker 3: Hello, Hi Heather, how are you very well? Thank you?
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  Speaker 2: Now I understand these drones and robots are doing these
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  Speaker 2: stock takes every ten days now because of this network.
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  Speaker 2: How often were humans doing it?
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  Speaker 3: They were doing it twice a year, so sort of
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  Speaker 3: semi annually. You do a stock take and it normally
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  Speaker 3: takes about ten days of preparation before you can actually
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  Speaker 3: start the stock take. So in this case, it really
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  Speaker 3: provides efficiency around how you can do a stock take
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  Speaker 3: and how often our more you can do it as well.
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  Speaker 2: Why is it so hard for humans? Is it just
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  Speaker 2: because of the warehouse? Things are up so high.
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  Speaker 3: It's the size of the warehouse, It's that you have
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  Speaker 3: to scan every single item within an aisle. It's also
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  Speaker 3: the height at these warehouses are fifteen meters high, so
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  Speaker 3: getting to the top of the warehouse. So really it's
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  Speaker 3: about how they can do this more efficiently and more
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  Speaker 3: effectively over time.
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  Speaker 2: And then how many drones and robots have they got
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  Speaker 2: going at any one time on this.
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  Speaker 3: At the moment, it's one, So it's a pilot and
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  Speaker 3: they're using it pretty much through the evening to actually
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  Speaker 3: do the stock take every ten days, no as often
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  Speaker 3: as they need to really in the case, yeah, so
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  Speaker 3: they can do it whenever they want really, so effectively,
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  Speaker 3: what we've done we've worked with Ericson and also a
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  Speaker 3: company good Cipher Robotics, and the private five G network
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  Speaker 3: which is enabled by Ericson gives great coverage within the
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  Speaker 3: warehouse and it enables the robot to go up and
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  Speaker 3: down an aisle whenever required.
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  Speaker 2: Well, why did you have to build its own little
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  Speaker 2: private five G network? Why is it not just using
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  Speaker 2: the regular five G network like the rest of us.
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  Speaker 3: It provides more autonomy as the latency that you need
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  Speaker 3: to actually run a warehouse, it's much more effective, it
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  Speaker 3: gives better coverage, it provides them with their own individual solutions.
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  Speaker 3: So it's it's not impacted by the broader network.
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  Speaker 2: You're going to have to put that into the NES
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  Speaker 2: assume I know nothing put that into normal people's language
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  Speaker 2: for me, What does that even mean?
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  Speaker 3: So what it really means is is that it provides
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  Speaker 3: much better coverage within the warehouse from a connectivity perspective. Yes,
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  Speaker 3: and it enables the robot to actually connect to the
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  Speaker 3: network more effectively.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, so thank you Mark, Now I understand it. Okay,
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  Speaker 2: So it's not going to hit a black spot and
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  Speaker 2: fall out of the sky type of thing like. It
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  Speaker 2: will have absolutely five G everywhere inside that warehouse.
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  Speaker 3: Absolutely, that's absolutely the aim of what we do with
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  Speaker 3: a private five G.
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  Speaker 2: Is there some AI going on here as well?
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  Speaker 3: Not in this case. In this case, it's very much around. Well,
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  Speaker 3: it is autonomous, so from that perspective, it is going
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  Speaker 3: up and down the aisle autonomously. Yeah, so there is
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  Speaker 3: a little bit of AI built into how it operates.
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  Speaker 3: But realistically, what it does is it sets a course,
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  Speaker 3: it looks at the aisle that it's going up and down.
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  Speaker 3: It scans every single item from bottom to the top,
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  Speaker 3: and that and then it concludes what they would class
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  Speaker 3: as its mission.
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  Speaker 2: Now this seems to me like a no brainer. Why
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  Speaker 2: has it taken so long to get one of the
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  Speaker 2: first ones underway?
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  Speaker 3: It's it's really about bringing different types and looking for
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  Speaker 3: different types of solutions for problems. And so the private
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  Speaker 3: five G network within five g's always been there, but
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  Speaker 3: really it's about what you built over the top of
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  Speaker 3: it with different types of solutions. So you bring that
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  Speaker 3: convergence together and you're looking for different types of problems.
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  Speaker 3: So for instance, in a port there might be a
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  Speaker 3: different type of solution that you need. In a manufacturing facility,
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  Speaker 3: it's a different type of problem. So really this is
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  Speaker 3: the first one of its kind in New Zealand and
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  Speaker 3: hopefully there's going to be a lot more.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, Now what does it cost? I mean what is
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  Speaker 2: if somebody is sitting there like thinkingg's I need one
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  Speaker 2: of those for myself? How much money do they have
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  Speaker 2: to scrape together?
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  Speaker 3: Well, it depends on the solution, to be honest, and
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  Speaker 3: it also depends on the type of private five G
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  Speaker 3: network that you need, and there's there's so many different variables.
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  Speaker 3: It's it's based on size of where you need the
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  Speaker 3: private five.
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  Speaker 2: Solution tens hundreds of thousands millions. What's the ball it
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  Speaker 2: would be.
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  Speaker 3: It would be in the hundreds of thousands up in
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  Speaker 3: terms of the type of solution that you would need.
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  Speaker 3: And it's it's really about it depends on the actual
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  Speaker 3: requirement that you would need to go and build.
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  Speaker 2: This is going to have a huge impact on in
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  Speaker 2: New Zealand's productivity. O'd to manage, wouldn't it an accuracy?
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  Speaker 3: Look, And that's that's the reason we did it. It's
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  Speaker 3: a really good use case to help them become, you know,
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  Speaker 3: a digital air line, a world leading digital airligne. So
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  Speaker 3: and that was one of the reasons that we were
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  Speaker 3: really keen to do it with in New Zealand because
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  Speaker 3: that's their mission to be the world's leading digital aligned
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  Speaker 3: So if we can help them do that, that's fantastic.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, very cool. Mark, Thanks very much, appreciate it, Mark Beta,
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  Speaker 2: customer director for Enterprise and Government.
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