Mark Beder: Spark New Zealand customer director for enterprise and government explains private 5G warehouse project

Some complex airline problems might be solved with another type of aircraft now operating in an Auckland warehouse.

Air New Zealand has teamed up with Spark, Ericsson and Canadian firm Cypher Robotics to deploy a robot-tethered drone.

The airline and the telco said they worked together to create New Zealand’s first private 5G network for business.

Mark Beder, Spark New Zealand customer director for enterprise and government, says the size and height of the warehouse has presented challenges.

"It's about how they can do this more efficiently and more effectively over time."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now how cool is this. Spark has built the first
private five G network in the country. It's for Air
New Zealand. It's in Air New Zealand's large logistics warehouse
and the network is now being used by drones and
robots in order to do regular stock takes that are
just really too hard for humans to do. Mark Beider
is Spark's customer director for Enterprise and Government. Mark, Hello, hi,

(00:20):
heir the how are you very well? Thank you? Now
I understand these drones and robots are doing these stock
takes every ten days now because of this network. How
often were humans doing it?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
They were doing it twice a year, so sort of
semi annually you do a stock taking, it normally takes
about ten days of preparation before you can actually start
the stock take. So in this case, it really provides
efficiency around how you can do a stock take and
how often our more you can do it as well.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Why is it so hard for humans? Is it just
because of the warehouse? Things are up so high.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
It's the size of the warehouse. It's that you have
to scan every single item within an aisle. It's also
the height at these warehouses are fifteen meters high. So
getting to the top of the warehouse. So really it's
about how they can do this more efficiently and more
effectively over time.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
And then how many drones and robots have they got
going at any one time on this.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
At the moment it's one, So it's a pilot and
they're using it pretty much through the evening to actually
do the stop take every ten days, no as often
as they need to really in case, yeah, so they
can do it whenever they want really, so effectively, what
we've done we've worked with Ericson and also a company
good Cipher Robotics, and the private five G network which

(01:29):
is enabled by Ericson gives great coverage within the warehouse
and it enables the robot to go up and down
an aisle whenever required.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Well, why did you have to build its own little
private five G network? Why is it not just using
the regular five G network like the rest of us.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
It provides more autonomy also the latency that you need
to actually run a warehouse. It's much more effective, it
gives better coverage, it provides them with their own individual
solutions so it's not impacted by the broader network.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Going to have to put that into assume I know nothing.
Put that into normal people's language for me, what does
that even mean?

Speaker 2 (02:06):
So what it really means is is that it provides
much better coverage within the warehouse from a connectivity perspective. Yes,
and it enables the robot to actually connect to the
network more effectively.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Okay, so thank you Mark, Now I understand it. Okay,
So it's not going to hit a black spot and
fall out of the sky type of thing like. It
will have absolutely five G everywhere inside that warehouse.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Absolutely, that's that's absolutely the aim of what we're what
we do with Avate Private five G.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
May is there some AI going on here as well?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Not not in this case. In this case, it's very
much around. Well, it is autonomous, so from that perspective,
it is going up and down the aisle autonomously. Yeah,
so there is a little bit of AI built into
into how it operates. But realistically, what it does is
it sets a course, it looks at the aisle that
it's going up and down, It scans every single item
from bottom to the top and that, and then it
concludes it what they would class as its mission.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Now, this seems to me like a no brainer. Why
has it taken so long to get one of the
first one underway.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
It's really about bringing different types and looking for different
types of solutions for problems. And so the private five
G network within five g's always been there, but really
it's about what you built over the top of it
with different types of solutions. So you bring that convergence
together and you're looking for different types of problems. So
for instance, in a port there might be a different
type of solution that you need. In a manufacturing facility,

(03:24):
it's a different type of problem. So really this is
the first one of its kind of New Zealand and
hopefully there's going to be a lot more.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, now what does it cost? I mean what is
if somebody is sitting there like, thank eggs, I need
one of those for myself. How much money do they
have to scrape together?

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Well, it depends on the solution, to be honest, and
it also depends on the type of private five G
network that you need. And there's there's so many different variables.
It's based on size of where you need the private five.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Different solution tens hundreds of thousands millions, what's the ball.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
It would be? It would be in the hundreds of
thousands up. The type of solution that you would need
and it's really about it depends on the actual requirement
that you would need to go and build.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
This is going to have a huge impact on in
New zealand'sroductivity out to manage. Wouldn't it an accuracy?

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Look, And that's the reason we did it. It's a
really good use case to help them become, you know,
a digital air line, a world leading digital airlige. So
and that was one of the reasons that we were
already keen to do it with in New Zealand because
that's their mission to be the world's leading digital aligned
So if we can help them do that, that's fantastic.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah, very cool. Mark, thanks very much, appreciate it, Mark Beta,
customer director for Enterprise and Government at SPART.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
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