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Singtel has unveiled a portable 5G platform to help enterprise customers deploy trail use cases within internal premises to help drive widespread market adoption.
Under the banner of GENIE, the aim of the launch is to provide organisations with the ability to set-up a portable 5G network and trial use cases on-premises within 60 minutes.
Requiring no prior installation of equipment or infrastructure, GENIE has been designed to create an “independent 5G network at any location where it is deployed”, targeting businesses seeking to conduct trials without the capability of a 5G network.
“While many enterprises are aware of 5G, they may not fully understand how their operations can benefit from this technology,” said Dennis Wong, vice president of 5G Enterprise and Cloud, Group Enterprise at Singtel. “By bringing 5G right into the customers’ premises, GENIE can help enterprises to quickly validate their solutions with their partners or verify the performance of their end-to-end use cases with no installation cost.”
GENIE is deployed in a suitcase-sized container consisting of a 5G network control kit and a standing mount with 5G radio antenna. According to Wong, the platform requires only a standard electrical outlet to power and access to a window for the platform to determine current location via a global positioning system.
“Seeing what 5G can do in their own premises will help more enterprises adopt 5G and speed up their digital transformation,” he added.
Delving deeper, Wong said customers can “host and deploy” applications on GENIE while connecting devices using a “high-speed and low latency 5G network”, removing reliance on an internal network such as the internet in the process.
The move is designed to “mitigate the leakage” with enhanced data security and low latency also aimed at solution developers and device manufacturers using GENIE to validate prototypes in customer premises.
From a go-to-market standpoint, customers can leverage Singtel’s ecosystem of partners to test Industry 4.0 applications such as autonomous robots in a smart factory, augmented, virtual or mixed reality, drones and holographic projection.
The launch comes weeks after Singtel and Optus unveiled plans to expand 5G ecosystem capabilities to enterprise and start-up customers in Singapore and Australia, rolling out Amazon Web Services (AWS) Outposts to drive digital transformation adoption.
As reported by Channel Asia, the move is motivated by a desire to help customers develop low latency 5G solutions via multi-access edge compute (MEC) infrastructures, leveraging Outposts to allow robotics, drones, autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence offerings to operate at ultra-low latency.
