Cologne-Bonn Airport relies on expensive 5G

Several hundred thousand euros for its own 5G network? Cologne-Bonn Airport thinks this is an appropriate expense and plans to provide its passengers and security personnel with the blazing-fast mobile Internet. As it now turns out, however, it will be a while before North Rhine-Westphalia’s largest airport can shine with the Open RAN. Until then, people will have to be content with the fact that the large 5G infrastructure can only be used to read electricity and water meters.

5G network as Open RAN

People have already been working on the installation of a private 5G network for almost eleven months. On the part of the airport, it was decided to request support from Japan. So the IT service provider NTT complied with the request and promised to build a corresponding network for the price of a few hundred thousand euros. The airport’s plans came to light this week in an article published by Wirtschaftswoche. During an interview, the major weekly was able to tease out a few details from the IT boss responsible, David Preuß.

“We have given ourselves an open time frame given the novelty of the technology, but are making much faster progress than we would have expected.”

Faster network benefits more than just passengers

Of course, there will be many passengers who will be delighted to finally be able to enjoy fast 5G at Cologne-Bonn Airport. However, this customer satisfaction was not the main concern of the airport operators. Instead, they also wanted to simplify and speed up daily workflows. In particular, a fast Open RAN could namely enable smart solutions in baggage transport as well as border controls. Since the private network is to cover an area of almost 1,000 hectares based on the latest mobile communications standard, pretty much every element of the airport should be able to benefit from it.

The airport of the future?

But simplifying previous processes appears to be just the beginning. With the help of a private network, there are even more possibilities. For example, this makes it easier to determine the location of people. Looking into the near future, support from robots and other autonomous machines will also become increasingly relevant. The basis for this is always a stable and fast network. One can speak of luck that Cologne-Bonn Airport relies on modern instead of outdated technology. At present, for example, you can hear more and more frequently about problems involving overloaded LTE networks at airports. The data load is now simply too great for the old standard. But it will probably be some time before we can experience the pioneering features of the North Rhine-Westphalian airport in action. So far, the new network can only transmit the meter readings for electricity and water consumption.