It depends whom you ask. How much does it cost for a school to lose communications connectivity? The “price” might be lost time that could have been spent teaching lessons or completing assignments. How about public areas monitored by video surveillance cameras? That cost might be the public’s safety. For a factory, lost productivity is often relatively easy to calculate. For a hotel, what is the price of customer dissatisfaction?
And what might downtime mean for ports responsible for importing and exporting thousands of tons of goods, representing millions of dollars’ worth of shipments per year? It could mean logistics disasters, halted movement, depreciation, even spoilage. It most certainly means decreased revenue and reduced productivity. In most of these scenarios, downtime is simply not an option.
Transforming Ports with Wireless Connectivity
From 2017 to 2018, a port in Visakhapatnam in India earned a total income of over $160M USD and was responsible for 63M+ tons of goods according to their administrative report. It is India’s second largest port by volume of cargo handled. Downtime, even short durations, would have led to multimillion impacts on the port’s customers.
When Visakhapatnam needed to enable Industrial IoT (IIoT) RFID systems, provide outdoor Wi-Fi and improve security, they had several options to consider. One option, a fiber connection, meant digging up cement roads where more than 1,000 trucks pass every day. This would have halted the port’s operations. To avoid disruption, a wireless solution was chosen over such a “wired” connection. Textra Solutions deployed Cambium Networks’ fixed wireless and Wireless LAN solution because of its high-speed connectivity and reliability. Specifically, the port has chosen the following setup:
- Backhaul infrastructure
- 4 PTP wireless backhaul links
- 4 ePMP Force 110 PTP backhaul links
- Multipoint distribution wide access network (WAN)
- 3 ePMP 1000 GPS Sync Access Points
- 24 ePMP Force 200 Subscriber Modules
- 4 ePMP Force 110 Subscriber Modules
- Access
- 19 cnPilot Outdoor Wi-Fi Hotspots
Now, the port uses Cambium Networks wireless solutions for both their primary and secondary communication systems. To hear more about how this port benefits from Cambium Networks’ fixed wireless broadband, download the case study here.
IIoT Solutions With Cambium Networks
A complete, end-to-end communications infrastructure is key to enabling IIoT. Cambium can help optimize your technology systems and keep your operations running smoothly. Explore our IoT solutions. Reach out to the Cambium sales team if you have a project you would like to collaborate on, and we will leverage our experience to deliver results that transform your business.