Phoenix Contact, Quectel and Ericsson announced that they have worked together to develop and deploy what the companies claim is the first industrial 5G router for local industrial applications in a private 5G network.
To achieve the 5G router's design, the partners brought their strengths together: Phoenix Contact as a supplier of WLAN, Bluetooth and mobile radio routers for industrial applications; Quectel as a global supplier of cellular and GNSS modules; and Ericsson supporting product development as a network supplier and a leading developer of 5G technology.
From interacting at an early stage, the three companies say they were able to rapidly develop a solution that provides industrial-grade performance over private 5G networks. The collaborative product has seen extensive interoperability testing at the Ericsson lab to ensure reliable commercial performance of the 5G router with mobile network operators.
In addition, all three companies say they cooperated closely to enable Industry 4.0 applications with the 5G standalone private network.
With the help of the newly developed 5G router, industrial applications, such as machines, controls and other equipment, can now be connected to a private 5G network and thus be orchestrated in their resource usage, priority and behavior, say the partners.