Field Forward Episode 3: The Role of Telco and & 5G in the Future of Industrial Operations

Welcome to Episode 3 of Field Forward!

🎙️ Host: Cihat Kahraman, CEO and Co-Founder of VSight
🎙️ Guest: Ihsan Ozcan, Sales CTO of Central Europe and Central Asia at Nokia

In this episode, we explore the transformative power of 5G and beyond in revolutionizing industrial operations. From Industry 4.0 advancements to 6G innovations, Ihsan provides an in-depth look at how telecommunication technologies are reshaping automation, efficiency, and productivity in industrial settings.

What’s Covered in Episode 6

✅ 5G Monetization in Industry 4.0:
Discover how industries like manufacturing, refineries, and logistics leverage 5G networks to streamline operations and reduce costs.

✅ Private Networks vs. Slicing for SMBs:
Learn how private 5G networks benefit large enterprises and how slicing makes 5G accessible for small and medium businesses.

✅ Low-Latency Applications:
Explore how 5G supports real-time communications, automation, PLC systems, and AGVs.

✅ Sustainability and Efficiency:
Understand how 5G and XR technologies reduce travel, minimize waste, and optimize productivity.

✅ What’s Next After 5G:
Gain insights into 5G Advanced and 6G, including haptic feedback, cobots, and holographic meetings.

✅ Barriers to Adoption:
Discuss challenges such as infrastructure costs and the availability of 5G-enabled industrial devices.

Why Listen?

💡 This episode is perfect for:

• Field Operation Professionals: Learn how 5G can enhance operations and reduce costs.
• Industrial Leaders: Understand the value of private networks and network slicing.
• IoT and Automation Experts: Explore the impact of 5G and 6G on advanced industrial applications.
• Sustainability Advocates: Discover how connectivity reduces environmental impact.
• Telecommunication Enthusiasts: Stay updated on the latest trends in 5G and beyond.

Quotes from Episode 3

🗨️ Ihsan Ozcan:
“5G is not just about speed. It’s about ensuring every corner of your shop floor is connected and productive.”

🗨️ Cihat Kahraman:
“5G’s low latency and real-time communication capabilities make it a game-changer for industrial automation.”

🗨️ Ihsan Ozcan:
“With 6G, we’ll see technologies like haptic feedback and cobots redefining how we collaborate in industrial settings.”

Get Involved!

📣 Share your thoughts or questions! Submit them via the link below to be featured in future episodes.

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➡️ https://www.speakpipe.com/vsight

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Transcript

0:00

Yes. Welcome to Field Forward, the ultimate a to z podcast for field operation professionals.  In this podcast, we will explore the latest trends, strategies, and top tips for optimizing  productivity and efficiency in industrial organizations. I'm your host, Cihat Kahraman,  the CEO and cofounder of VSight. And in this episode, we are having a very special guest,  the sales CTO of Central Europe and Central Asia at Nokia, Ihsan Ozcan, is with us. We will be exploring the role of, telecommunication, in Industry 4 0,  discussing 5 g and beyond, what's what's gonna happen after 5 g and  industrial communications and much more. Again, joining us,  special guest, Ihsan Ozcan, Ihsan Abi from Nokia. Welcome, Ihsan. Thank you. Thank you, Cihat. Thank you very much. How are you? How's it going?  Feel better today. It's a very nice day in Istanbul. Very nice. Very nice. I envy you. I envy you. Okay. So for our guests, I know you're very well, but for our guests, could you please,  share a bit about your background, your experience at Nokia? Alright. Well,  thank you very much for the opportunity. My name is Ihsan Ozcan. I am working in sales as a CTO,  And I have been working in Nokia quite a long time in the same company, but saw different roles,  like software engineer in early days, on-site support engineer, integration engineer,  technical project manager, and then 7 years, rotational in Belgium, in. Always gray weather. Light gray, mid gray, dark gray. That's the  country. And then I miss my country a lot. I became homesick at the beginning of, 2,000. I landed Istanbul, and I was about to kiss the ground almost. So and then,  I have, started to build up Turkish, international engineering teams,  within the company. And the Turkish engineers, are and were very successful. Every month,  every year, we have got the extra request from other Nokia units from other countries. In some,  years and some months, we were, hiring almost 70 engineers per month. So, 70 countries we have served with this Turkish forces. The beauty of Turkish engineer,  he never gives up, until the problem is fixed,  whether it's weekend or after 5 PM. A little bit the improvement point of Turkish engineer,  the communication skills, that should be improved. That was the feedback, we got from,  our partners. And then so many years, 10 years, I have been building up these teams. 30, 30 teams together with this, potential Turkish engineers. We have build up. And  then I decided to join a CTO team, because it was really interesting,  promoting, private 5g, 5g advanced, 6g for the industrial customers. That is  the interesting part of it. We will talk about, I think, in the next questions. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. We will we will delve into it, more and more. But it is very interesting. Like, you have seen, also the, the kitchen side of it, like, from the software engineering part,  from the demand part, etcetera. You worked with international teams. And now also, leading all  the all the 5 g expansion, there. That's amazing, actually. I think this this also gives you a bit  of more of an understanding what is going on on the background on the kitchen side, I I guess. So that's a very special talent, I would say. You are very kind. Thank you very much. Yeah. Yeah. So, and, of course, we're talking about 5 g. There are a lot of buzzwords around,  etcetera. But, like, regarding the industry four zero and afterwards,  the digitalization of industrial or industrial organizations, what is Nokia's vision, and  how does Nokia plan to position itself not only now, but, for example, looking for next 5 years,  next 10 years? Yeah. When we talk about 5 g, the key challenge there is a 5 g monetization. Every telecom operator, considers how I'm going to monetize if I build up 5 g network,  which is a little bit costly, of course, because we use that 3 dot 4 gigahertz for  the high capacity, 1 gigabit per second for the SIM card, and also 700 megahertz  for the coverage reasons. When it comes to 5 g monetization, one of the topic pops up is,  industrial factories and refineries. Their need pops up. For instance, the refineries, they put a  request on the table towards the 3 g p p, which is our, standard body. They said, hey, guys. If you can develop access technology with a low latency, we can get rid of heavy cabling  of all those sensors. In one refinery, there are at least 10,000 sensors. So,  the 3 g p p guys are in contact with the 5 g AGIA nonstandard body,  5 g Automotive Association standard body. So they are collecting these requests from these  industrial nonprofit organizations, and they are developing features on the 5g, 5g advanced,  and 6g. So that's why the one millisecond latency, came up with the 5g technology. Actually, that's the request of Rafineries and many other industrial partners. So suddenly,  before consumers, first time ever, this does this didn't happen with the 2g, 3g, 4g. But with the 5  g, first time ever, the industrial, companies are the first client of 5 g technology. So  that's why Nokia noticed this trend, and right now, it's number 1 with the 600 customers,  industrial customers worldwide. Also in Turkey, Arcelik, Cayirova, washing machine factory. That's the first customer using this technology. So, to make it short, the industrial, usage,  getting a benefit from the 5 g technology is key right now for the 5 g monetization. So I  guess that is gonna be the biggest question for not only Nokia, but everyone in the 5 g and,  also the network communication, like how to monetize it, how to make it make it,  with the numbers, because I guess also it is all about, the new challenges when you apply  the technology to, to the field. So I guess the the problems arise from there. Right? Let me, give a example, of one use case, to make it clear why this becomes really  interesting. The other day, I have been giving presentation to shipyard in Turkey,  And the shipyard technical people told me they give a guarantee for the Lux shipyards,  luxury shipyards, yachts, and etcetera. And these yachts, rich people, go everywhere in the world,  like Caribs and Maldives and everywhere. As soon as there's a small problem or  medium sized problem or big problem, they call back this shipyard. Hey. Fix the problem. And then they prepare visa, ticket, flight ticket, couple of days,  send it over, send the guys over to the Maldives. Then I told them,  hey. If you use the augmented reality solution with the remote expert use case, you can solve  half of the this type of problems without sending your guy to them. And they were very happy. And they asked me advice, then I advised, of course, me side. Hey. Talk with these guys,  augmented reality with a remote expert. That's perfect. You see? They jump on it. Amazing. Amazing. No. Really. But by the way, I can relate. We have a customer that is 75% of the cases of the service guys are  just like, without any touch. It is very simple to solve. Either the cable is not connected,  etcetera. So very simple things, but 75% cut on all the service, service level travels, etcetera. So that is that's amazing use case. Big game. Big game, really. Exactly. Exactly. Cool. But overall, like, we are talking about augmented reality. Just like augmented reality,  you know, there are those buzzwords all around going on, like 5 g,  even 6 g. Can you elaborate on why it is so significant? What is the impact of it,  on industries such as automation and efficiency? Like, why it is so important that, like, 1,000,000,000 of dollars is just, like,  going towards that communication problem. Why this is so important? Yeah. Let me give you,  the basics. In any factory doing their serial production, like, Archery for instance,  19 seconds, they produce a washing machine for every 19 seconds for the cars, for the trucks. Everybody has his own KPIs. And to achieve these KPIs,  you need the automation to make sure these KPIs are executed. To to run a automation,  you need a network connection in every corner of your shop floor. No excuse like water,  like electricity. You need a network connection in every corner of your shop floor. To do so, mobile technologies are best in terms of coverage, in terms of, handover,  in terms of, fixed use cases, mobile use cases, one technology for everything, then you have a  infrastructure with a mobile technology at your shop floor. You are sure about the coverage,  capacity, and everything related to the network connection. Once you have a network connection,  now your industrial engineers start thinking, hey. Yes. I can I have a opinion to catch up  certain level of effectiveness on this corner of this, factory? Another engineer may think of another corner of the,  factories. There are many examples. I visited more than 58 Turks,  Turkish large enterprises. In every factory I hear the storyline. They have a pain points. It can be solved with this mobile technology. So that's why 3gpp gets this type of imports from  Rafiner Group, nonstandard body of Rafiner Group, automotive industry, nonstandard of,  not automotive, industry members. They get the request from the connected industries,  factories, and they give this task to standards, and the standards are implemented by thousands  of r and d engineers of Nokia, for instance. Yeah? For instance, let's say 5 g advance. After 5 g, there's going to be 5.5g or 5g advance,  which is coming release 18. Expected in at the end of next year, the standards  will be So it is not gonna be 6 g, but it's gonna be 5.5 g. Right? Yeah. Yes. Correct. Like the early days, 4 dot 5 g, if you remember. Yeah? So with that release,  it's amazing. You don't need a PoSI asset tracking third party solutions anymore. As soon as you insert SIM card or ESIN to the object, you have a asset tracking with a 10  centimeter accuracy, indoor, outdoor. Look at the beauty of technology. You don't need any extra  third party company from over there building up such a system. You have one infrastructure,  mobile technology, that provides you handover for the AGVs, fixed use cases like video analytics,  or asset tracking with a 10 centimeter accuracy indoor, outdoor with the same technology. That's  why I call it it's a infrastructure item like water and electricity. Yeah? So those are the things really make me excited, and that's why I really work  on this topic with a a lot of emotion. Amazing. I mean, everyone is talking about the speed of,  of the 5 g, the speed that will come with the 5 g, but I believe that the, like, the main impact  is not gonna be only about speed, but it's also making everyone, every corner in shop  floor connected, and accessible, and also also enabling them for asset tracking, etcetera. Yeah. Low latency. With a low latency. Exactly. Exactly. So it's only about the speed. Today, I was, in visiting AGV vendor company in, Sakarya. This morning,  I was there. They were talking about PLCs and the speed of the,  PLCs. They are talking about milliseconds. If there are, let's say, 10 milliseconds, latency,  there's a problem and they build up another set of PRCs new to the machine with a lot of cabling. But with this 5 g, they don't need such a huge cabling. They can position, locate PLC in their  data center, kind of soft PLC, one PLC for all the sensor and machine control at the shop floor  with the 5 g. That's the dream. That's a very interesting dream. Otherwise, after 10 years,  20 years, at your shop floor, there are many different type of PRCs, maybe old PRCs, new PRCs. How are you going to maintain that? Yeah. You see? Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting. Very interesting. And, like, overall, when you're thinking about this process,  when do you anticipate that, like, the 5 g is gonna be widely available in industrial  organizations? When it's gonna happen, and Very good question. After 5 g? Very good question. In our country, we expect, the 5 g will might be released for our Turkish industry  next year. There are some, statements from our regulation body, from minister that can  be available next year within next year. I hope it can. If we look at the Europe,  for instance, German, they have allowed already last year. And today, there are 341 factories. They have all of the 5 g within their factory. Porsche, Audi, Mercedes,  airport, university campus. Name it, ports. So many different kind of industrial area,  they jump on it. If you look at UK, it's 700. So it is coming. It is this technology is really coming to the industry areas. Also,  new features are under the development like 10 centimeter accuracy. Also, support with the 5 g  advance for augmented reality, virtual reality. There is going to be special features for it. You need to pay attention for them. Because if you have a product trying  to sell to industries and factories, you need to look at what is coming  with the 5g 5g advanced 6 g. 6 g is not far. 6 g is a 20, 30. Yeah? 7 years is My next question would be that, actually. Like,  what is next? What is what is what is next after 5 g? So you're talking about 20 thirties, like,  which is gonna happen in 6, 7 years as far as I understand, which is gonna be  and what is gonna be the difference between 6g5g? What what is the difference there? When you talk about 6g, you need to keep in your mind the following things. One is  cobots, another robot, cobots. 2nd, haptic, tactile applications. 3rd,  holographic meetings. Let me open them 1 by 1. From your point of view, let's say, we cite augmented reality. So that's why I say, you need  to pay attention what is coming. With the 6 g, you need to introduce haptic feature to your product.  Because augmented reality this time will be together with the haptic feature. So let's say in,  your factory in Turkey, there's a problem at the machine, and the expert lives in Munich, Germany. Today, what you are doing, you build up augmented reality sessions. Whatever technician sees on-site  from his cell phone camera, the expert from the mini, he sees the same thing, and then the expert  starts drawing. Hey. Right corner of machine, that is the thing you need to take out the cable. Yeah? Or show the guy or show the documentation. These are the things you can do today. With the 6 g,  the mini the expert from the mini may ask the technician on-site in Turkey. He may ask to him,  can you touch the machine? And then if the machine is so hot, he will feel it in me. You get the point? Interesting. Interesting. Okay. You need to carry out the touching emotion to the. Yeah? So So we're talking about, like, literally being there just like literally just like being  there. So right now, we are talking about mutually being on-site, but then I think we  will we will talk about, like, literally being there by not being there literally. Yeah. Yeah. It's Very interesting. Interesting. So another feature is that holographic meetings. So if  I use any parfum myself, today we do the this meeting video remotely. Still  remotely, but with the holographic, solution, we our image, real image,  will be in the same meeting room, you and me, same meeting room with our perfumes. If we handshake each other, we feel it. When I talk about those to my  to my developers that we will integrate those, they they will go crazy. Literally,  they will go crazy about that. But you will be fed. Yeah. Of course. Of course. Absolutely. To be fair. We will be. Yeah? Absolutely. We will be. We will be the 1st runner. Absolutely. The last thing, is about Cobot. What is the difference with robot? Cobot if you  if you call something Cobot, it means that you have a symbiotic relationship with that robot.  Meaning that symbiotic relationship, you use this robot everyday in your daily life.  Either he makes you a massage, or drive your car, or or your car is your cobot. There is no drive wheel anymore. It's empty. You  can work in your car while driving. So no, driver, seat anymore. Nothing. Nothing. To do so, you need a high speed network. You need to equip your car with a lot of sensors,  like human being, to understand what's going on around. Plus you need to transfer this  data to nearest location. That's why with the 6 g, we talk about 100 nanosecond GR. With the 5 g, we talk about 1 millisecond, but with 6 g,  100 nanosecond. Incredible. Incredible. Just incredible. Just incredible. You've been the part. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. No. This is this is amazing. I think, I'm I'm so excited to see what is  what is next to come, actually. So, no, me, personally, I'm so excited. So, you know, very interesting point. But, you know, every technology comes with a cost,  and, like, we're talking about the 5 g. You mentioned already that in Europe,  a lot of large organizations already they have the 5 g already assembled,  in their infrastructure. And what about small and medium sizes? Like, is it something affordable,  or shall we wait a little bit more for them to, to have this technology? Because I believe that for every economy, and especially in Europe also, in Turkey also,  small and medium size is the locomotive of the economy, of the industry, and when this  is gonna be affordable for them? There is a solution for it. For the large enterprises,  we talk about private dedicated 5 g network dedicated to that large  enterprises. Nobody else is using those base stations. It is dedicated to to him. But when we talk about, small to medium size companies, we talk about slicing. One of the  big feature of 5g slicing together with the low latency. Slicing means that operators,  Turkish Telecom, Turks and Vodafone, they are supposed to have their 5 g core in their  data center. They are investing their 5 g base station all over the country, and they give a  slice to the small company from this existing infrastructure. That's why it is affordable  because small company cannot invest such a, base station, 5 g core servers, everything himself. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. You you see the point, I guess. Right? Okay. Okay. Okay. I see. Very interesting. Very interesting. That is that is the. If there is a solution,  the slicing is the solution. Yeah. Okay. Like, that that that makes a lot of sense. That make a lot a lot of sense because on especially,  like, SMB level, I think, that is the most important problem. Like,  the investments shouldn't be big. I mean, and the and the technology should also obviously  help them. And as I said, I mean, that is that is the that is the locomotive. 2nd, thought I already offered, which is, you know, in our country, there are 370,  OSPs, industrial zones. Every industrial zone, they have their own authority,  they have their own budget, and they can take a decision themselves for their 400 small to medium  sized factories around in that industrial area. Makes a lot of sense. They can take  a decision. They can cost they can pay the cost to build up such a dedicated network. This time, not for company basis. This time for industrial area basis. Yeah? So, like,  covering every everywhere inside that organization only area. Makes sense makes a lot of sense. That will be very cost effective actually for them. Okay. Very  interesting. Very interesting. Okay. So everything seemed very, very, very positive, and I just wanna,  like, end our our conversation with the last question, which would be, what do you see as  the most important challenge right now in the 5 g and beyond? Like, what what what could be,  the road stopper? What could be the most challenging problem? And, plus, also,  if you can, if you can also mention, how do you consider, like, next 5, 10 years,  and where the Nokia will fit into this vision? How do you see that next 5 years? That is also gonna be a connected question to that,  actually. Okay. Okay. Let's answer first one. What are the challenges? The, first of all, the cost of this, 5 g network,  either private or slicing. Because if you go slicing option, then the operator should  bear this cost for country wide. Yeah? But on the other hand, 83 countries, 153, I guess,  5 g operators, they have already deployed 5 g starting from the crowded places. Yeah? Second challenge is user devices, Cihat. Not, smartphones. I'm not, talking about smartphones.  Smartphones, anyway, will be upgraded to 5 g. But once we talk about industrial customers,  within their factory, the user devices of, availability of 5g user devices will be key. For instance, as I said this morning, I visited AGV vendor company, local company, and I kindly  advised them, hey. You have a hardware engineer anyway. Why don't you buy 5 g chipset module,  not the 5 g rotor, chipset module, insert and modify it inside of your AGV? Otherwise,  you need to sell your e g v with the 5 g router on top of it. So that's why the key challenge,  the availability of 5 g industrial user devices. It is improving, but right now, these two things are the key challenges, cost and the availability  of 5 g and user industrial devices. For the next 5 to 10 years, According to my, opinion,  the industry will understand the beauty of this technology if you are supposed to produce, one  washing machine, 3rd 19 seconds or, a car for 2 minutes. I was in Germany last week, and I learned  that Bosch should've got, refrigerator company factory. They produce refrigerators 10,000 per  day. So they need a reliable network connection technology like electricity, like water. It's a infrastructure item. So as I gave example from Germany, in Germany,  nobody discuss about whether I should have a 5 g or not. They buy it because it is crucial for them  to make automation smooth, productiveness, effectiveness. Automation works everywhere,  so they buy it. So that's why I visit as much as I can the Turkish large enterprises,  also the industrial nonprofit organizations, also promoting next digital factory in Atasihir. It's a world class, digital factory where there is, many private 5 g use cases already  implemented. Everybody should see it, how it is done, and what is the effectiveness,  productiveness in Max digital factory in Istanbul,  Atasir. It's not from it's not in UK. It's not in Germany. It's here. It's only here. Just, allocating the time and seeing the guys what they  achieved so far. So thank you very much for the opportunity, Cihat. Thank you very much,  It was a pleasure actually for me, to have you here. I enjoyed a lot our weekly calls. Definitely, I'll call you next week also to  just enjoy this conversation. All time. Welcome. All time. Welcome. But but but, really, again, thank you very much for your time. I know  you have a very tight schedule, and thanks a lot for sharing your  insights My pleasure. Also about 5 gs and after. That was very insightful for me also,  and I'm sure that for for the audience too, it's gonna be very good. So, thanks a lot. It has been very enlightening conversation. I like that. Thank you very much. And to our listeners,  thank you for tuning in for for this episode. We are very happy to have you here. Stay tuned for the, very exciting, discussions on the on the on the on the on this topic and  the next topics in the coming weeks. And if you have any question, please record  it from the link below, and we will definitely include this, in our next episode. And, plus,  we would love to have your feedback. Leave us a comment. We will appreciate that, your input also. Thanks again. Everybody. Thanks a lot. Have a wonderful day. Bye bye. Bye.