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Last week, Swisscom Broadcast chose Nokia to deploy a drones-as-a-service network across Switzerland. By deploying 300 Drone-in-Box units, the companies said they plan to enable emergency response, perimeter protection, and infrastructure inspection, which will help keep public safety workers safe. 

In addition, resource optimization can help to save the lives of those involved in incidents, Nokia said. The company explained that remotely operated drones will gather relevant information within the first minutes after an emergency, enhancing first responders’ situational awareness. 

“We are pleased to select Nokia as a partner for this important infrastructure project in Switzerland,” stated Dominik Müller, CEO of Swisscom Broadcast. “Together, we can speed up the go-to-market of our drones-as-a-service offering to our customers in the industrial and public safety landscape in Switzerland.”

“The integration of our existing People Density Tool and our drone operations expertise with Nokia’s industrial-grade hardware in combination with an open and future-proof software architecture is an important key to support such large-scale projects,” he added.

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Nokia Drone Network to offer service across Switzerland

Nokia and Swisscom said they expect the deployment to be available in all areas of Switzerland. The companies plan to cooperate with regulatory bodies to ensure all operations comply with spectrum and aviation safety rules.

The deployment will use the Nokia Drone Networks to offer drones as a service at scale. The networks include the turnkey Drone-in-a-Box system, which integrates the drone, and a docking station. They also include a ground control station, a payload with video and thermal cameras, related software, and service components.

The company’s system supports application programming interfaces (APIs) for third-party integrations. It also supports traffic monitoring systems, video management software, dispatch solutions, and industrial inspection and process monitoring systems.

Nokia also provides drones for warehouse inventory management.

Public safety agencies can tap drone network on demand

Nokia said public safety agencies in Switzerland will be able to tap into the nationwide drone network simply by requesting a drone flight, similar to a ride-sharing service, from Swisscom Broadcast. The partners added that they will be support users with their experience and analysis of the collected data.

The drones will also inspect tall or hard-to-reach infrastructure, which removes the need for workers to climb or walk around hazardous areas, said the partners.

The drone networks are a part of the Nokia mission-critical industrial edge computing (MXIE) architecture. As a result, they enable industrial customers to easily add edge computing applications, such as asset detection or the creation of 3D maps, asserted Nokia.

“Nokia Drone Networks’ solution enables large-scale projects, as it incorporates our MXIE technology to power its advanced computing functions and software,” said Raghav Sahgal, president of cloud and network services at Nokia.

The company claimed that its collaboration with Swisscom Broadcast will also advance Industry 4.0 use cases, beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) autonomous operations, and the expansion of 3GPP technologies for drone use in Switzerland. This will be the second nationwide Nokia Drone Networks project after Belgium’s Citymesh deployment.