MTN, Huawei, China Telecom launch 5G-enabled smart mine

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JIMMY MOYAHA: We are now taking a look at an interesting collaboration between MTN, China Telecom and Huawei in an effort to build or launch Africa’s largest smart mine.

I’m joined on the line by the general manager for Enterprise Solutions at MTN South Africa, Sudipto Moitra, to take a look at this. Sudipto, good evening. Thanks so much for taking the time. What is a smart mine?

SUDIPTO MOITRA: Hello, Jimmy. Good evening to you and to all your listeners. Mining operations that are being done smartly by leveraging all the modern technologies are what is generally referred as smart mining.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Sudipto, I have a bit of experience in the mining space. When you think about mining, particularly in the underground context, you don’t often connect that to telecommunications and connectivity because obviously there is no signal; there are signal interruptions and all of that. So how do you get around that in the mining world, and how do you create a connected mine when half of the things might be underground, but also might be very far away from each other?

SUDIPTO MOITRA: That’s a great point, Jimmy, and that’s exactly what leads to smart mining – whether it’s an open-pit mine or closed mine.

It’s that connection across the board that is critical. And that connectivity is the bedrock of implementing modern technologies at the mine.

To sort of go about it, there are various ways. There is no one sort of single formula that the mines are implementing. But what we talk about from an MTN perspective, and this collaboration that you spoke about with China Telecom and Huawei, is around what we call ‘private network’.

It’s effectively creating a private network for that mining environment that connects the underground mine, and then having seamless technologies that can work on top of that connectivity.

JIMMY MOYAHA: What does that connectivity then do for the business? I imagine there are some things that you want to benefit from that connectivity. I can think about things like reports that need to come out and data that needs to be sent through. Having the ability to transmit that kind of data almost instantaneously, compared to not having connectivity, surely makes a mining operation more efficient.

SUDIPTO MOITRA: Absolutely, Jimmy. The key part that most of the mines are trying to drive is obviously health and safety, the number one priority together with the operational efficiency.

There are a lot of use cases in the mine once you have the connectivity, and not just the connectivity but the high speed, the ultra reliable proper throughput.

So we can look at the modern use cases that the mines need, whether it is vehicle tracking, which is gadget law+ in a lot of South African mines, or whether it is looking at the health and safety use cases.

So yes, there are various use cases across the value chain of the mine that can then be enabled to bring in the smart mining execution.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Sudipto, what are some of the challenges with deploying a system like this – or deploying systems like this? I imagine it’s not one single system that you’re going to have to deploy to link up everything. What are some of the challenges that come with wanting to connect a mine or ‘connectify’ – if that’s even a word – the mining space?

SUDIPTO MOITRA: Right. I think from a technology perspective the technology is proven. The private network 5G that we are talking about globally – a lot of mines have already implemented that and they are in a kind of advanced maturity curve.

What we are seeing is the commercialisation of these solutions. That is the key. How do a lot of mines, if they’re having operational cost challenges, let go, based on this modern technology, the opex?

Or if there is capital investment that might be hard to come by at this mine, how do you kind of make it and that investment look at the DCO [design, construct and operate] and the return of investment?

One of the key things is commercialising these solutions, these technologies; it’s not about proving the technologies.

And then also doing it at scale because on the mines, depending on whichever mines we are talking about, it’s not just doing a proof of concept in a small area to look at a little use case, but it’s about making it mainstream across the mines.

So those are some of the challenges which we believe in the short to medium term – as this technology becomes a lot more operational – will become also quite commercially viable.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Sudipto, you mentioned the fact that international mines and other mines around the world are already using connectivity and technology to enhance mining operations. Do you have an idea of some of the really good use cases, perhaps, where, like you said, we’re seeing things around vehicle tracking and all of that which can be made more efficient – but some of those really unique cases where this might not even have been a possibility without the use of technology?

SUDIPTO MOITRA: Yes, I think what we are seeing globally …

The global trends are showing the convergence of what is called information technology, IT, together with operational technology, OT.

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So there are a lot more mature use cases across the mines where this convergence is actually live.

And to your point, Jimmy, there are a lot of these over and above the technologies that are there in the mine. The transformation elements are then being implemented to make the mine more efficient.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Sudipto, I think it was Volvo that said they wanted to look at autonomous vehicles. Now we’re talking about connectivity in mining, and that came to mind because I’m thinking you can’t really achieve full autonomy – especially if these vehicles are using things like satellites and mapping and all of the technology that goes into making them autonomous. You definitely need to have connectivity.

Is this kind of where we’re seeing the future of mining transition – you guys are able to bring the tech side of it to the party and then you can start to have the conversations around modern use cases that involve autonomous vehicles.

SUDIPTO MOITRA: Yes, spot on, Jimmy. I think autonomous vehicles is one of those profound use cases that is becoming mainstream on the back of a 5G private network – and definitely earlier I spoke about vehicle collision avoidance.

So there have been a lot of technologies where these …technologies or these days the OEM [original equipment manufacturer] of the different vehicles; they have all got the technology that works.

But the most important implementation is the seamless execution of this across the mine, again not in a particular patch or a particular area, but as the vehicles are kind of transcending across the mines. These are heavy utility vehicles – can they be fully autonomous?

And, more importantly, it’s not just the autonomous mining, or the vehicles, it’s about the data that they’re bringing to bear.

How do you then mine the data to make it more effective and go into the smart mining mode?

So those are some of the trends that we are seeing across the mining sector, across the value chain.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Sudipto, what next for a company like MTN? Obviously you are involved in the Northern Cape manganese mine where this project is taking place. But over and above that the MTN group operates on the African continent. There are many mines on the African continent. Where do you guys kind of see the transition happening from your role when it comes to the mining space?

SUDIPTO MOITRA: Jimmy, I think as MTN we are going through our own transformation of what we call ‘Telco to a TechCo’. By becoming a TechCo it allows us to bring these modern technologies. What I believe is that especially private networks and leveraging technologies like 5G are going to fundamentally reshape, redefine various industries.

So the future we see is we always believe at MTN that everybody deserves the benefit of a modern connected life. So, together with the connectivity, how do we move up the stack of IT? How do we leverage the other telco assets that we have?

As you rightly said, Jimmy, this is not just a story in South Africa, but across all the countries [where] we operate on the continent we believe that we can reshape these industries.

We can bring in the 4IR technologies. And with the modern trends of AI, with the modern trends of other technologies, of convergence of IT and OT, we want to pay a pivotal role in reshaping some of these businesses and, together with that, serving the community and maybe being the first in the world to reshape some of these industries by bringing in the likes of private networks and 5G technologies.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Smart mining – the future is definitely here. It’s a very interesting future, and it’s always nice to see that technology can come in to improve things.

I think we’ll leave the conversation there, Sudipto. Thanks so much for the time and for the insights. The general manager for Enterprise Solutions at MTN South Africa, Sudipto Moitra, joined us to take a look at smart mining and the attempt at launching the largest 5G smart mine in collaboration with China Telecom, Huawei and MTN.

Of course that looks to be a manganese mine that’s going to be taking off in the Northern Cape.

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