Brazilian steel producer Gerdau and Embratel, a major player in voice and data communications, have announced an agreement to roll out a dedicated 5G and LTE private network.
The deployment will take place at Gerdau's industrial plant in Ouro Blanco, a Brazilian municipality located in the state of Minas Gerais in southeastern Brazil.
The project, developed by Embratel, will include the installation of several towers on site to expand the potential for connectivity and automation, covering more than 8.3 million square meters.
According to the companies, this is the first project in the Latin American steel industry to use 5G to expand the use of the Industry 4.0 concept to take advantage of automation, productivity, flexibility, visibility, traceability, data use and security in processes, including planning, production and logistics.
Gerdau noted that it has increasingly embraced digitalization and now aims to further expand its digital capabilities to enable a fully connected production chain.
Although no exact date appears to have been provided, the project will be divided into three phases. It will begin with the installation of a dedicated LTE network with a total capacity of 256 Mbps. The second phase will add 5G on the 3.5 GHz frequency, increasing capacity to 3.8 Gbps.
The third phase will involve densification of the dedicated LTE and 5G network to provide more combined capacity to 4.8 Gbps and extend coverage to the entire operational range of the Gerdau unit.
