América Móvil’s Embratel boasts growing pipeline of private networks

Embratel, the Brazilian B2B telecoms arm and integrator of América Móvil, has a growing pipeline of private network projects, especially with firms that are more advanced in terms of industry 4.0.

Dozens of projects are underway or under negotiation with large companies from the mining, ports, steel, e-commerce, logistics and health sectors, marketing head Alexandre Gomes told BNamericas.

“About two, three years ago, there was a process of understanding, evangelizing this segment among companies. Then, we moved to a PoC [proofs-of-concept] phase with the market. Currently, we only approach these projects in a try-and-buy model,” said the executive.

This means Embratel seeks to avoid risks with a pilot or PoC that does not lead to some kind of remuneration or closing of a contract.

As an orchestrator and integrator, Embratel is and has been at the forefront of some of the most emblematic projects in the Brazilian market. One of them is the private network for steelmaker Gerdau.

Announced in 2022 as the first for the steel sector in Latin America, the project is currently entering its third phase, said Gomes. This involves migrating the 4G network to a 5G network.

The mobile network is from Claro, the group's sister company. Currently, there are five antennas installed at Gerdau's Ouro Branco mine. 

Citing strategic reasons, Gomes could not reveal the names of the network equipment suppliers. 

He did say that Embratel has been looking to work with a pool of suppliers for different equipment (network core, antennas, etc.) and this is not restricted to the traditional sector players, like Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia and NEC.

Gomes sees a possibility for the steel giant to expand the private network to other plants and operations, although this is not part of the contract.

Another emblematic case is that of Nestlé. In this project, the supplier of antennas for Claro's network was made public: Ericsson.

The Swedish supplier is also one of the main partners in other private network projects from Claro and Embratel. 

Among these are networks for industrial manufacturer Weg, for Universidade de São Paulo, and the innovation laboratory at Hospital das Clínicas, in São Paulo. 

In another Claro-Embratel private network project, a standalone 5G network is being deployed for a video analytics solution at the port of Suape, Pernambuco state. 

The partners in this project include Nokia, Atos, AWS, Arsitec and Spirent.

GROWING ECOSYSTEM

According to the latest report by the Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), 1,384 companies worldwide deployed or were deploying at least one network by the end of 2023. 

The number of networks could be higher as Huawei did not provide updates to the February report.

The data refers to Q4 figures provided by GSA’s members: Nokia, Ericsson, Mavenir, Airspan, Keysight Technologies, OneLayer and PrivateLTEand5G.com. Huawei is also a member.

According to GSA, there were 77 countries with at least one private mobile network. Manufacturing, education and mining remain the top three sectors in terms of customers.

Regarding projects, North America grew the most year-on-year in Q4, at 36%, followed by Latin America with 34%. 

Latin America’s share of projects climbed from 6% in 2022 to 6.3% last year, according to the report.