N. Sukhbat from Mining Insight had the opportunity to sit down with Mr. Ian Ross, Ericsson’s Head of Private Cellular Networks for Australia and New Zealand for Enterprise Wireless Solutions. They discussed the implementation of 5G technology, safety, and the future of the mining sector.
Let's start the interview by talking about your company. What do you do, and what services and products does your company offer?
Ericsson is a large multinational company, and a lot of what we do is in the mobile network space. Enterprise Wireless Solutions is a division specifically focused on enterprises, looking at private cellular networks and how they are used by different verticals in the industry. We also work with Wireless WAN and how we can extend 5G to branch offices, IoT vehicles, and similar applications. In the mining sector specifically, we see a lot of activity around our private cellular network offering, which we call Ericsson Private 5G. This platform is used not just in the mining sector but by many verticals around the world to digitalize and improve their connectivity. As different markets embrace digitalization more and more, we’re seeing advanced use cases-drones, AR, VR, robotics, and automation. In mining particularly, we have remote control equipment, autonomous trucks, and personnel tracking, all of which require better quality connectivity than is currently available. In the mining sector, you’ll often find spotty connectivity-it’s available here and there, but it’s not ubiquitous. Moreover, the connectivity is typically not stable or consistent, which is a particular problem for autonomous technologies. These require stable connections for emergency stops and emergency controls. The Ericsson Private 5G platform is used by mining companies and other industries such as manufacturing and ports to provide a secure, dependable, pervasive connectivity layer across their operations. It’s a big step up from what people use today with Wi-Fi. This new technology covers entire sites more cost-effectively, provides better quality connections, and enables new use cases that allow mining companies to compete more effectively.
You mentioned autonomous technology, which is relatively new in Mongolia. For example, Rio Tinto’s Oyu Tolgoi, an underground gold and copper mine in southern Mongolia, recently introduced such technologies. Since underground mines raise critical safety concerns, can you elaborate on how these technologies ensure safety?
The use of these technologies-and why cellular technology, particularly 5G, is so important in mining is that autonomous technologies help make mines smarter. They remove workers from high-risk areas, ensuring their safety. It’s important to consider the spectrum of technologies-autonomous, semi autonomous, and remote control. These technologies leverage existing skills and capabilities but move them into a safer operating model. Ultimately, it’s all driven by safety-ensuring that every worker can go home at night to see their family. Particularly in underground mining, we’re seeing this more and more. Autonomy plays a big role, but there are also other innovations like digital ground support. This involves sensors connected by 5G embedded in rocks to measure vibrations and instability. Overall, 5G connectivity is having a massive impact on the safety and sustainability of mining operations, both underground and on the surface.
What are the unique features of your products, and how do they differ from your competitors’?
Many people, when they look at cellular technology, think they need to partner with a mobile carrier running a large national network. This can intimidate companies, as they assume they don’t have the skills to manage such a network or that it would be very expensive. With our technology, we’ve focused on simplification and ease of use. Ericsson Private 5G is a solution specifically designed for industrial applications. It’s designed to be faster to deploy, easier to use, and what we call lifecycle-assured. This simplicity means industries such as mining, manufacturing, ports, and wind farms can deploy and manage the technology with existing networking skills. Often, there’s no need to hire additional staff or undergo extensive training. We’ve taken an incredibly advanced technology and made it accessible, allowing enterprises to deploy it successfully and with low risk. The result is a technology that connects autonomous, semi-autonomous, and remote control vehicles. It’s easy to deploy, maintain, and keep up to date, which allows mines to operate at maximum efficiency.
I noticed Ericsson has a partnership with Epiroc. Could you elaborate on that?
Yes, we have several partnerships with industry OEMs around the world. Epiroc is one we are particularly proud of. Both companies have Swedish roots and a long history of collaboration. Our Ericsson Private 5G platform is deployed in Epiroc’s test mines in Sweden. Machinery and systems they develop for underground mines worldwide are now tested and validated for cellular connectivity using Ericsson Private 5G. This provides great confidence to mining customers that Epiroc’s equipment will work seamlessly with 4G and 5G technologies.
Epiroc has a presence in Mongolia. Does Ericsson operate in Mongolia?
Ericsson is a global leader in telecommunications, serving customers in 180 countries. In Mongolia, Mobicom Corporation is a valued customer of Ericsson.
You’re presenting at IMARC 2024. What will your presentation cover?
Today, we’re presenting with one of our customers, Newmont. We will talk about how 5G technology is enabling the safer, smarter autonomous mine. We’ll discuss our partnership with Newmont and how 5G benefits the mining sector, which differs from consumer use cases. We’ll focus on how 5G is ushering in a new era of connectivity in underground mining, enabling safer adoption of new technologies. On the surface, it’s about creating a robust connectivity layer where machines and fleets can operate without concerns about network capacity or performance. With our network capabilities, operations can scale without connectivity limitations - a significant breakthrough compared to the past.
Autonomous technology is shaping the future of many industries, not just mining. How do you see advancements over the next five years?
We’re entering an era where many more devices will be connected at scale-not just for monitoring but to make them more productive and powerful. Across different sectors, we’ll see a greater introduction of robotics to streamline processes and more automation to help workers transition from executing tasks to managing processes. For example, in industries unrelated to mining, such as prawn farming, individual workers currently inspect the shells of prawns for quality. In five years, robots and automation will handle that inspection, while humans oversee the process as supervisors. In ports, we’ll see more remote-controlled cranes and automated guided vehicles moving containers. In the mining sector we'll see a lot more remote control. I think autonomy has a strong role to play, and we’ll see a lot more remote control of basic machines, which will help get people out of the higher risk mining zones. In manufacturing, we’ll see more robotics and connected tools. We are going to see amassive change across a range of other verticals too, as industries look at what high quality connectivity can provide and see that productivity is now obtainable with solutions like what Ericsson provides with our 5G network. This basically means enterprises now can say “I'm going to connect everything. I'm going to be able to connect it reliably, and I'm going to be able to take that data from it in real time and use that data to make better, more informed decisions around what I do with my business.”
When discussing the future, we must also consider sustainability and energy transition. How does Ericsson contribute to these efforts?
We approach sustainability from two angles. First, 5G technology itself enables electrification, better connectivity, and improved system efficiency. For example, in mining, sustainability often comes from electrification. Our advanced connectivity helps those machines operate more efficiently with a smaller carbon footprint. Second, we continuously improve our own technologies to make them more sustainable. We have reduced our energy consumption dramatically in parallel to the industry. Over the past several years, we’ve reduced energy consumption in our platforms by approximately 60%. That's from our focus of reducing the power that these networks operate on. We have AI built into our radios that learn the usage patterns of the network to reduce the power consumption. Our network puts itself to sleep in milliseconds if not being used to transmit anything, but all those milliseconds add up over a day to be significant reduction in power. I see that we are driving a sustainability objective through the innovation we apply to our own platforms, but also the way we enable our platforms to be used by enterprise to drive the deployment of new technologies that promote sustainability.
What are your expectations for IMARC 2024?
It's a good platform for the industry as a whole to share best practices from around the world. The mining sector has traditionally been a large global community, but what we do see is that knowledge and expertise doesn't often get shared. IMARC is a good forum for OEMs to share their latest and greatest offerings and technologies to the mining houses. It's a good forum for the mining houses like Newmont to share what they're doing in this space, because I think as an industry, sometimes we need to come together and put aside concerns of competition. We need to work together and collaborate better for the benefit of the industry as a whole. Mining is a fantastic industry for driving the development of economies. For example, Mongolia’s mining sector contributes significantly to its GDP. If heavy industries around the world are operating a maximum safety level, maximum efficiency, maximum sustainability, that's a good outcome for the community and for the mining sector. I hope that IMARC 2024 will provide a platform for all those organisations to share their best practices, share their ideas, and for the participants to be able to walk away saying “I heard about this being done a particular way at IMARC 2024 in Sydney. We want to try and replicate the same thing in our operation because it's the best practice.” What we're doing with our presentation today is that first step in that journey. We want to show people how we're using Ericsson Private 5G to drive that safety improvement, to drive that sustainability improvement, to roll out these new technologies that can make a mining operation safer, more sustainable, and more responsible.
Any final message for our readers?
My message to Mining Insight readers is that technology is a powerful tool for any mining operation. Don’t be afraid to try new things. The long-term success of the mining sector will depend on safe innovation. Let’s embrace innovation pragmatically and safely. Look at new technologies like 5G connectivity and how they can enhance operations. 5G is a transformative technology that offers immense potential for safety, efficiency, and sustainability.
Thank you for your time.
My pleasure.
Mining Insight Magazine, November 2024
