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CSPs meet critical industries on the path to Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is emerging in rural areas because that is where players in capital-intensive industries like farming, railroads, trucking and energy production have assets they need to monitor, maintain, optimize and operate remotely.

11 May 2021
CSPs meet critical industries on the path to Industry 4.0

CSPs meet critical industries on the path to Industry 4.0

Although there may be a common perception that rural telecom is the domain of the disconnected, emerging Industry 4.0 use cases show that this view of the network’s farthest edges is outdated. Our new report looks at why communications service providers (CSPs) should view broadband connectivity as a vital utility.

Industry 4.0 is emerging in rural areas because that is where players in capital-intensive industries, like farming, railroads, trucking and energy production, have assets they need to monitor, maintain, optimize and operate remotely. These industries provide some of the most tangible use cases for edge services, autonomous networks, platform-based service models and private 5G networks because they increasingly use networks, clouds, applications, and automated if not remotely controlled processes to operate.

Demand for transporting and processing workloads to support Industry 4.0-like applications is growing, Telenor’s Terje Jensen, Senior Vice President and Head of Global Network Architecture, told the FutureNet World audience in April. He explained that enterprises and public sector organizations in critical industries are now coming forward with new needs. They are undergoing their own Industry 4.0 transformations in a variety of verticals and all “want to be smarter, faster and to automate.”

Analyzing data & increasing automation


Stakeholders in sectors like agriculture, energy, logistics, construction, heavy equipment and transportation are using more data collection devices such as RFID tags, sensors, surveillance cameras, drones and mobile apps. Increasingly they use live monitoring and data analysis to drive decisions that protect and optimize assets, revenue streams, supply chains and physical infrastructure.

  • For healthcare sector clients, Jensen explained that connectivity has become “mission critical” for providing care, particularly as telemedicine has been embraced as a norm. This in turn is driving demand for private and even autonomous mobile networks, such as on hospital campuses, but which work “seamlessly with the wide area network.”

  • In agriculture, Jensen said, the use of sensors – temperature, moisture, light, and more – and video is driving high volume analytics workloads. “Increasing the robustness of connectivity is business critical,” Jensen said as large workloads, like video footage, move to and from the cloud for automated analysis.

  • Utility providers are looking to use dynamic provisioning, closed loop service assurance, and network slicing to help automate power distribution networks. They also want to find new ways to leverage 5G technology to enable intelligent inspection of power grid infrastructure and electricity consumption data.


As these industries’ data analysis workloads and apps run in private and public clouds, the broadband connections they rely on for access to them becomes more critical. As a result, they rely increasingly on robust, resilient and dynamic connectivity to monitor and operate assets, automate processes, and run large analytics workloads.

CSPs are working to provide that connectivity through a range of solutions including software-defined networks and 5G. In doing so, they face critical complexity challenges they must address through network, operations and automation of customer experience management.

Download the full report