TIM and the Municipality of Turin have strengthened their collaboration in technological innovation and set a new record, turning on Europe’s first 5G Edge Cloud live network with connected drones.
The milestone was presented today by Turin’s Mayor, Chiara Appendino, the Innovation Councillor for the City of Turin, Marco Pironti, TIM’s Chief Executive Officer, Luigi Gubitosi and TIM’s Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Elisabetta Romano; the Minister of Technological Innovation and Digitization, Paola Pisano, welcomed the announcement with a video message.
By enabling the integrated processing of Big Data collected by IoT platforms and analysed by Artificial Intelligence systems, 5G Edge Cloud is the keystone for the advancement and dissemination of the digital services for the Smart City: public safety and self-driving cars, environmental monitoring and Industry 4.0. The 5G Edge Cloud network guarantees very high bandwidth and low latency and allows an exceptionally large amount of data to be aggregated and processed, providing for safe digital services of an extremely high quality that respect customer privacy, as well as allowing greater agility and flexibility in the configuration of services and applications, under the typical Cloud logic.
TIM hereby further boosts its "5G Digital Business Platform", the innovative platform that works as a joint ecosystem between TIM, its technological partners, the world of developers, companies and the public administration to develop new digital services in a more agile, straight forward, scalable and rapid way.
To highlight some of the ways TIM’s new 5G Edge Cloud network can be used, network connected drones for environmental and infrastructure monitoring were showed today:
- both the drone and the control system are connected to the 5G Edge Cloud at a very low latency and use a secure radio channel, therefore preventing possible interference with the drone. This means drones can be flown safely even in densely populated areas (city parks, industrial areas etc.);
- because the new network has an ample data collection capacity and concentrates processing in the part of the network closest to the terminals (i.e. close to the customer), it is possible to simultaneously watch a 4K live video on numerous 5G terminals.
In the coming months, trials will begin with drones connected to TIM’s new 5G Edge Cloud network for new environmental and infrastructure monitoring services in the City of Turin:
- city rivers, allowing for preventative measures to be taken to avoid or at least reduce potential flooding risk;
- the infrastructure of important city monuments, ensuring any necessary preservation work can be planned;
- city parks, guaranteeing ever greater safety for the citizens who use city’s green spaces.
TIM has its research and development centre in Turin, where its laboratories trialled the first 5G connection in Italy on a live network using the first prototype smartphone and the first live demos of 5G services aimed at the general public: vehicles, drones, Industry 4.0, digital tourism and smart city, in addition to the first remotely driven car. Furthermore, Turin, together with Rome, Naples and Florence, is one of the first three Italian cities where TIM has already switched on 5G and made the first commercial services available to families and businesses.
In 2017, TIM and the City of Turin embarked on a joint path of technological innovation - confirmed on 1 August 2019 with the signing of a three-year Memorandum of Understanding - which has contributed to making Turin a European benchmark for digital technologies, a true 5G solutions open-air laboratory.
Turin, 11 November 2019
