Verizon Business Finishes Private 5G Network Across Five Sites at Thames Freeport

Verizon Business and Thames Freeport have announced that a private 5G network now covers five separate sites across the Thames Freeport economic corridor, one of the busiest maritime shipping hubs in the United Kingdom. The announcement describes the rollout as one piece of a multiyear, multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild the economy of the River Thames Estuary region.

The five locations are each private tenants of the hub, operating independently and with different uses in mind for the technology. Each tenant's network runs on its own core, which the announcement says gives every site complete data sovereignty. What they share is a common wireless platform, built to industrial standards, spanning port, logistics and manufacturing environments.

The pitch to tenants is built-in infrastructure for whatever they decide to develop. The list in the announcement includes physical AI, computer vision, real-time asset tracking, connected-worker and worker-safety applications, predictive maintenance, edge computing and autonomous operations driven by AI. Which of those a site takes up is left to its own priorities.

Nokia supplies all of the hardware and software, exclusively, through its Enterprise Campus Edge business. The networks use the Nokia Digital Automation Cloud platform and Nokia MX Industrial Edge. One wrinkle: that Nokia unit is currently subject to a planned sale to AURELIUS.

Testing has been organised through the Freeport's Connectivity Innovation Lab, which has brought technology providers together with partner sites to trial use cases in three areas: maintenance and efficiency, tracking and monitoring, and health, safety and security. The first trials have either finished or are under way. A second phase will turn to ports and logistics, where users have named areas they want to investigate for private 5G solutions.

The backdrop is the Freeport's status as a designated UK free trade zone, set up to spur growth, create high-value jobs and attract global investment. Since 2021, it says, it has helped create more than 1,400 jobs and secured over £2.13 billion in private investment. A further 1,290 people work across the tax sites, and 2,548 more jobs are in the confirmed pipeline. Its long-term Growth Plan targets up to £4.9 billion of additional investment, a doubling of the region's trade capacity and support for up to 28,000 jobs by 2045, with an emphasis on skills, training and opportunities for local communities.

Verizon and the Freeport argue the network is basic infrastructure for that growth as operations, workforces and port traffic become more complex. Reliable wireless, they say, carries data, links people and machines across physically and technologically difficult sites, and helps move innovations out of controlled trials and into daily work.

Robb Juliano, Verizon Business's Vice President of 5G Acceleration, called the project a reference point for private 5G's versatility and scalability: one commercial hub, five sites with distinct needs, and many connected use cases. He said similar enterprises with multiple, evolving sites could lay the same foundation. Tom White, the Freeport's Innovation and Skills Director, said the platform lets key sites innovate together while still meeting the demands of live operations, and helps attract investment and jobs.

What to watch next is the second trial phase on ports and logistics, and whether the trials turn into routine operations across the five sites.