L&T, Vi to build pilot private LTE network

L&T Smart World & Communication (SWC) and Vodafone Idea Limited (Vi) have joined hands to establish a use case for Private LTE enterprise network in India. As per the agreement, both the partners will carry out an accelerated ‘Proof of Concept (PoC)’ at group business L&T Heavy Engineering’s ‘A M Naik Heavy Engineering Complex’ at Hazira (Surat). The private LTE PoC is based on the technology developed by Nokia.

Furthermore, L&T and Vi have also teamed up to trial 5G use cases in the areas of Public Safety, Smart and Connected Health, as part of the ongoing 5G trials on the government allocated 5G spectrum. Both the companies have collaborated to test and validate 5G use cases built on IoT, Video AI technologies leveraging L&T’s Smart City platform, as revealed by the companies in a statement.

L&T claims that because of its ‘varied experience’ of ‘seamless IT/OT integration’ and ‘world-class technology’ solutions, it will be able to design, implement, test and validate the network as well as the ‘satisfactory deployment’ of the use cases over it.

“We believe private enterprise networks are here to stay, proliferate and help transform businesses on the Industry 4.0 growth path. We are excited about this technology and promise it holds, and along with our partners Vodafone Idea, are betting big in digitising Indian enterprises,” said JD Patil, Director at Larsen & Toubro.

Similarly, Vi Business claims that because of its deep expertise of providing innovative and reliable telecommunications services to enterprises, it is able to prepare for a ‘future ready’ industry through partnerships and trials with major industrial companies.

“We are conducting extensive POC for testing private LTE network for industrial applications at our L&T Heavy Engineering works at ‘AM Naik Heavy Engineering Complex’. We are confident that LTE will help us in achieving the goals of improved connectivity/coverage and also the ability to move towards greater automation using IOT in various Industry 4.0 applications,” said Anil V Parab, Senior Vice President, Head - Heavy Engineering and Member of the Executive Committee.