If you use your cellphone to send texts, scroll social media or check email, chances are you were a little disappointed by the much-hyped launch of 5G. But 5G technology, perhaps more quietly, is changing the game for business customers. The Tacoma Blue Edge Network (TBEN), which serves the Port of Tacoma and its first five enterprise clients, is the latest example of 5G’s power to revolutionize business operations and transform legacy infrastructure.
The 100+ year-old Port of Tacoma already drives an annual economic benefit of $3 billion and supports the employment of 42,000 people with an average salary of $112,000. Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards says the new network, which covers the Port’s East Blair Peninsula, will further improve the Port and its tenants’ operations and economic impact.
“What we’re doing with this 5G network is using what makes our city most successful, which is the fact that we have a deep-water port and are in the top 10 largest ports in the country. We’re taking that existing asset and leveraging technology to make it an even greater asset and tool to locate businesses here.”
The network is moving the bar for the Port and its tenants
The new 5G network was born of a collaboration between 5G Open Innovation Lab (5G OI Lab), which built and implemented the network, EDGE Cluster, the non-profit that owns it, Washington Maritime Blue and the City of Tacoma who together helped identify and connect the five initial client businesses. The network uses existing Port infrastructure like floodlights and utility poles to serve TOTE Maritime Alaska, Silverback Marine, Trident Seafoods, SAFE Boats International, and Motive Power Marine.
SAFE Boats International, which stands for Secure All-around Flotation Equipped, builds boats for military and law enforcement clients, including an aid package of patrol vessels currently being manufactured and shipped to Ukraine. The Bremerton-based company builds its largest vessels in a World War 2-era shop at the Port of Tacoma, an historic facility that unsurprisingly has its limitations when it comes to connectivity. Limitations the TBEN network is helping to resolve, according to CEO Richard Schwarz.
“5G just moves the bar,” he says. “In a 100-year-old building with aluminum boats all around you, the WiFi reach is fairly limited, so the 5G network potentially gives us better, faster, and more secure ways to communicate information around the facility.”
SAFE’s issues with WiFi are not unique to their factory, says Jim Brisimitzis, founder and general partner at 5G OI Lab, which built the new 5G network as part of its work creating a new business ecosystem for the technology.
“WiFi is fantastic for you and me on our laptops, but when it comes to covering large areas and other requirements, it’s limited. There’s only so much horsepower you can pull out of a four-cylinder engine before you need to go up to a six- or an eight- cylinder.”
Brisimitzis describes the previously network-less Port, one in which companies “would have to go and deploy hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of gear just to provide almost similar access to what we’re able to provide with four antennae,” and where employees would have to run from internet access point to internet access point “just to get the data they need to do their jobs.”
“That,” Brisimitzis says, “is a thing of the past.
Ready for the future, with the help of 5G
Because 5G networks can be updated remotely–without the need for new antennae or other equipment–Brisimitzis says TBEN also makes the Port ready for what’s to come.
“In one respect TBEN is a great example of technology being used to help generate efficiencies at the Port. But in another, as new technologies advance and as things change in the port ecosystem itself, essentially it’s future-proofing the Port because it has the connectivity and the computing horsepower and the connections to the cloud to enable virtually any sort of use case in the future.”
As technologies like 5G deliver increased network connectivity, job-killing automation on factory floors and throughout port facilities becomes increasingly feasible. But that’s not a concern for Mayor Woodards, because TBEN was built with the engagement of organized labor.
“I think in a lot of places when you talk about technology, you think about a struggle back and forth with labor unions, because sometimes they see it as a way of taking away work,” says the Mayor. “TBEN may be able to make work more efficient without removing jobs, and the fact that labor is working with us is really important.”
The network is no mere flash in a pan
Just as the TBEN network is the result of collaborations between private and public organizations and unions, so too will the network itself inspire future partnerships, according to Brisimitzis, whose 5G OI Lab connects network providers with startups building enterprise solutions for those networks.
“Our goal is to use TBEN as a virtual sandbox where alumni from our program and from Washington Maritime Blue can bring their solutions and use the network for trialing and validation…and even maybe work hand in hand with the Port’s clients on commercial engagements as well.”
Brisimitzis says that, “for us isn’t just a flash in the pan..If we get our way, it’s going to become an innovation destination where we can bring really cool technologies that would potentially be helpful to those clients.”
Without the network, SAFE Boats CEO Schwarz says the Port of Tacoma was already key to the employee-owned company’s future, allowing SAFE to build larger boats and providing the growing firm with access to a more diversely skilled labor force. The TBEN network gives another boost to the already rising tide, becoming what Schwarz says is “one of the enabling infrastructure items ”for SAFE’s Tide Flats facility. One that helps them with record operations now, and that is poised to help SAFE find new solutions to new and existing problems moving forward.
“I think that’s where this technology becomes kind of cool,” Shwarz says, “Because I think the rest of us are starting to find new ways that we think we can use TBEN. And so having the collaboration between the Port, Maritime Blue, the 5G OI lab, and EDGE Cluster kind of starts to bring all those pieces to bear in ways that hopefully allow us to continue to expand our business down there.”
It’s right in line with Mayor Woodard’s vision for the Port and the City.
“The additional capacity for businesses is going to help them be more successful. I think it’s going to be good for us as a city and for businesses; they’re going to be able to experiment and innovate right here. They’re not going to have to start here and go somewhere else because they need better or more infrastructure. They’re going to be able to start here, grow here, and finish here.”