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Veris susbidiary Aqura Technologies has been awarded a $1.9 million grant under the federal government’s 5G Innovation Initiative to help deliver its 5G LTE networks in mining operations.
Aqura Chief Executive Officer, Travis Young, stated the project was founded on extensive customer and industry feedback as critical to enable mining operators to unlock the benefits that surface operators had been enjoying for a number of years.
“With over 50% of mining in Australia being conducted underground and increasing, the industry is still playing catch-up with technology that is being widely utilised to great benefit in surface operations,” Young said.
“Our track record and development work, coupled with the 5G Innovation Grant will enable our team to work to deliver technical architectures and a validated commercial model which will enable and accelerate adoption,” he said.
The 5G Innovation Initiative grant will complement investment already made by Aqura to deliver technical architectures, commercial model development and installation of a live Private 5G LTE network in an operating mine.
More so, the grant is an important step in overcoming technical and commercial barriers related to operating next-generation broadband wireless networks in sub-surface environments.
The focus of the program is to fast-track the enablement of applications and processes that are being adopted in surface operations so underground operators can realise the benefits that enhanced environmental, safety and productivity outcomes that advanced wireless communications can deliver.
Aqura’s Chief Operations Officer, Alan Seery shared that underground operators were wanting a kick-start to advance their technology capabilities.
“Many underground mines use processes and technologies that are decades old and operators want to leverage the latest technology, but the technical challenges and the commercial model to acquire can be prohibitive,” Seery said.
“We’ve learnt a lot through our previous work in underground, and we believe our new LTEaaS platform optimised to deliver next-generation private industrial operations networks will support a new commercial approach that will better suit the business models utilised by mining operators,” he said.
And with new advances in radio access, we’re excited to have the opportunity to work with some very motivated partners to develop and make available new architectures which will bridge the underground connectivity gap,” he concluded.
The project leverages a lot of learnings from a 2017 project where Aqura successfully delivered Private 4G LTE in an underground mine in the Kalgoorlie region of Western Australia.
Source: Aqura Technologies
Zoe is a content creator, specialising in speech and corporate communications. She is currently the content producer of Supply Chain Channel— a learning ecosystem dedicated to connecting and empowering the Australian supply chain community.
