Hutchison Ports UK has completed the deployment of a private 5G network across the Port of Felixstowe, Harwich International Port and London Thamesport, creating what it claims is one of the most advanced industrial connectivity platforms in the country.
The Port of Felixstowe is the UK’s largest and busiest container port, with Harwich International and London Thamesport forming part of the same operational hub under the Hutchison Ports umbrella.
A key driver for the upgrade is Hutchison Ports’ major roll-out plan to introduce autonomous, electric trucks at the Port of Felixstowe, replacing a significant proportion of the existing diesel fleet. These vehicles demand continuous connectivity, very low latency for safe remote intervention, and the bandwidth to support multiple live video feeds when operators need to inspect a situation in detail.
The current 4G network, while extremely reliable for delivering work instructions to tablets in vehicle cabs, was never designed to handle these demands at scale.
The private 5G network is designed to provide the performance and predictability required for the next generation of autonomous operations.
Delivered by Three Group Solutions, it will provide “ultra-reliable”, high-capacity and low-latency connectivity to support large-scale automation, including autonomous trucks, remote-controlled cranes and data-rich applications that are central to the ports’ digital transformation plans.
By delivering a single private 5G network that spans all three sites, Three Group Solutions said it was strengthening the resilience and performance of critical national infrastructure while helping Hutchison Ports increase efficiency, enhance safety and support long-term sustainability objectives.
Upgrading the mission-critical communications in a live port environment required a carefully staged migration. Three Group Solutions designed and built the 5G network in parallel with the existing 4G system, using different blocks of radio spectrum so that both networks could operate side by side without interference. This allowed vehicles and machinery to be moved across in controlled phases, with performance monitored and optimised at each step.
“When you are dealing with the connectivity that keeps the country’s largest container port moving, you cannot simply turn one network off and another on,” said Graham Wilde, head of private networks at Three Group Solutions. “By running the 4G and 5G systems in parallel and moving assets in stages, we were able to deliver a smooth transition with no disruption to daily operations.
“Automation in ports is not about putting people out of work,” he added. “It is about changing the jobs people do. Roles become safer, more varied and more attractive, which makes it easier to recruit and retain the talent ports need for the future.”
Working with a small number of specialist technology partners, Three Group Solutions delivered a scalable 5G architecture with dual cores, overlapping radio coverage and diverse links between the three ports. The network sits wholly within Hutchison Ports’ existing cyber security perimeter, and is engineered to maintain operations even if individual sites or towers are taken offline for maintenance, or in the event of a fault.
While autonomous horizontal transport is the first major application, the private 5G platform has also been designed to support a wide range of future use cases. Potential candidate applications being considered include extending remote control to more types of machinery, including cranes, deploying sensors for predictive maintenance, using drones for inspection and environmental monitoring, or integrating video analytics and real-time data into digital twins of port operations.
“The capability of the new network means that possibilities for the future are only really limited by the imagination of what could be done,” said Wilde. “Felixstowe, Harwich and Thamesport now have a dedicated 5G foundation for the next decade of innovation.
“This project shows how private 5G … can combine resilience, performance and flexibility at industrial scale, and we look forward to helping Hutchison Ports build on this success in the UK and beyond.”
