# Scaling Operations with Nokia's 5G-Enabled Drone-in-a-Box Systems

- Event: NestGen ’25
- Published: March 7, 2025
- Length: 31:29
- Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/_r3k6Zt3w-Y/

> The transcript of a recorded NestGen session, for reading or for use with an AI tool. It comes from the video's
> captions; automatic captions can mishear names and terms.

## Transcript

**[0:20]** hello everyone and welcome back to nest in 2025 I'm anik chaturb leading business development in the emia region for FlytBase and I'm thrilled to have you here for this exciting session before we begin let's get some energy in the room where are you joining us from today drop your location in the chat we'd love to see how Global our audience is we are now diving into a critical topic scaling operations with Nokia's 5G enabled drone in the box systems one of the biggest challenges Enterprises face when adopting drone in the Box technology is scalability how do we move from a single doation to a fully Integrated Network of auton drones operating across large industrial sites smart cities and critical infrastructure stay tuned to get the answers to these questions as we unfold this session and now I'm honored to welcome Thomas he's a distinguished leader in the wireless telecommunications industry with over 15 years of experience in research development and business

**[1:22]** leadership as the head of embedded Wireless Solutions at Nokia Thomas is at the Forefront of innovation driving the introduction of industrial and Mission critical private fireless uh 5G networks and leading the development of the groundbreaking Nokia drone Tech networks also a huge thank you to our nesan 2025 sponsors the ones who are leading the way and the industry forward before we jump into the discussion a few quick housekeeping items please drop any questions you have into the Q&A or chat box we'll address them during our interactive Q&A session at the end of this the session is being recorded and will be available after the event be sure to check out the booth area to learn more about our partners and their Cutting Edge Technologies and of course share your insights key takeaways and favorite moments using hash now without further Ado let's welcome Thomas Eder to the stage Thomas over to

**[2:23]** you thank you very much anit and as soon as I have a chance I will obviously also share my SC green just a moment now you should be able to see the presentation yes good hey well together I think we got uh 15 maybe 20 minutes to talk a little bit about no draw networks and to uh talk a little bit about how to scale draw in a box operations basically with 5G and with modern telecommunications technology before I dig deeper uh into how we see the 5G ecosystem and how we see 4G 5G uh becoming more and more an enabler for for scaling drone operations I wanted to touch briefly base on uh our our drone in a box solution uh you might have heard about Nokia drone networks which is a turnkey drone in a box solution for your

**[3:23]** drones as service operations it's um one one more product on the Dron in a box Market um which is obviously a very very growing Market but I think as one of the unique selling propositions that Nokia has for this Market is uh it's really the the 4G and 5G connectivity and it is uh from a technology standpoint knowing very well that regulatory Frameworks in different regions of the world are different but the key is from a technology standpoint that system has been designed from from the day one for BB loss operations at scale and I will also show you in a couple of slides a bit more um about what BBL loss operations at scale means for us apart from that this year's nesen is all in the context of uh how can the Drone industry but particularly the Drone in the Box uh section of the Drone industry leverage um the benefits of AI the benefits of uh modern software Technologies and I think

**[4:28]** one of the key items is that we talk about Solutions on the market which are supported by either Edge Cloud Technologies or um data center technologies that allow um a a very Dynamic reallocation of computation and a dynamic allocation of where do I actually want to process the data that the Drone collects and uh I'll show you more about it in a moment how how we as Nokia see the situation in the market but overall um if you're eager to learn more about Nokia drone networks the Drone in a box solution you see here on the screen and the possibility for software Integrations with um with with other Solutions such as FlytBase and and different uh environmental different it environments um feel free to always reach out I think uh I think um it is also important to say as noia that we are extremely happy to

**[5:34]** present here today at at nesen and to be together with FlytBase and uh and uh the great team into an into an amazing collaboration let's look at the moment for a moment at uh how we see today the ecosystem in where why it is so important to um consider telecommunications skill or telecommunications Technologies for successful drawn in a box operations at scale the way we see the ecosystem today is that there are um basically the Telecom vendors and the Telecom vendors are the nokas and alikes um that can be also Nokia Partners which are the deploying Network Technology but that can also be simply it companies which know very very well how to deal with 4G or 5G networks no matter if it's private Wireless or public wireless networks and then on top of that we see the UAV manufacturers in that ecosystem and the UAV

**[6:36]** manufacturers I mean the market is growing there are more and more um airframes Coming um there are more and more drone in a box Solutions coming to the market which is um from my perspective a really really good indication for the market for all of those which are working in the Drone industry I I I want to say being since more than 15 years now in high technology development projects it can never go fast enough um the Drone industry is uh not growing fast enough the private 5G industry is not fast enough growing not fast enough like it it it's never market growth can never be fast enough but what is for me very very motivating and um um very good to see is that the the amount of solutions is getting more and the technology the pace at which the technology develops in the in the Drone industry is still very very fast which is uh a great sign that Innovation is still at the

**[7:36]** Forefront of this industry and um yeah that's motivating and that keeps all of us at Nokia but um I I trust also all our friends in the drawn industry working tirelessly and into into the right direction and the right direction is obviously you know thrown in a box operations at scale so coming back to the actual presentation here I think um I want to highlight one key point that is so so important and you'll see like if I click here back and forth you see the overlap between the UAV manufacturer and the Telecom vendor and that overlap is at least for us at Nokia but also for other friends in the in the UAV manufacturer industry a very very important key going forward um only if we are able to get over the let's say Wi-Fi based connectivity between the Drone and the dock and transition into 4G or 5G connectivity which is basically

**[8:40]** giving us unlimited geographical operation throughout a country throughout a city um we will be able to successfully scale and we will be able to guarantee reliable Beyond visual line of site operations for our customers and if I say for our customers I basically mean here the Third bubble in the in in in the ecosystem which is the service providers service providers here means the people that actually fly the drones for the end customers that can be a police officer in a dfr operation um that is flying for the colleagues out there in the field that can also one of our partners such as City mesh or a swisscom in in a in a nationwide centralized Operation Center of drones so the service providers are um the customers um where the UAV manufacturer and the Telecommunications vendors deliver their Solutions towards um and that is also something where we at Nokia we are used to

**[9:43]** work for service providers ever since it used to be in the past the telecommunication service providers the telecommunication service providers obviously still are our customers but nowadays we can count not only the telecommunication service providers but also the service providers as our customer base and um that's something we should never keep um that that's something we should never forget um we as drone in a box manufacturers we as the Drone industry ultimately our goal is to keep the service providers happy or also as one of our customers very often says what what always counts is that my Pilots are happy only if the pilots that operate at the solution or happy um you can guarantee a a successful successful operation and uh um that's where where we also believe that seamless connectivity through 4G

**[10:45]** or 5G um will help to keep your Pilots happy will help to increase the reliability of your operations carrying on to the topic of scalability and um when we talk about drone in a box projects with our current or future customers we always think about drone in a box projects as infrastructure projects infrastructure service projects in a sense um you can put Nokia drone networks projects or also drawn in a box projects on on par with um infrastructure projects such as mobile networks such as gas stations or for example a video surveillance system of a smart City those are all infrastructure projects and an M Network for those who are not out of the Telo industry um a m network is basically uh you know the the 4G network so the masts and the radios like those

**[11:45]** those big telecommunications masts you see out there and you know if we if we look at all those infrastructure projects and that can also be other examples than the ones I've listed here but all infrastructure projects have something in common they need a deployment location so you need a little bit of space you need a little bit of power you need some connectivity no matter if it's cable 4G 5G or whatever um and you need a customer who pays for the service because an infrastructure project is nothing else than an investment into the infrastructure in order to create a service and the um only difference between uh all these projects or all these infrastructure projects are then the so-called application specific hardware for an M Network so for example for an AT&T or a T-Mobile or a Verizon or a vone or airel or B type of network is the radio and the Mast

**[12:49]** for a gas station it's basically the gas station or for an electric car it's it's it's the charging pole um for a video surveillance system in a smart City it would be the camera and for a drone in a box project it would be the Drone in the Box system yeah so let's always keep in mind if we want to scale operations on a geographically large area we need a little bit of space we need a little bit of power we need a little bit of connectivity a customer and ultimately somebody who pays for the service in the end that's how we you know compare existing infrastructure service projects with no draw networks and we think there is a lot in common um between no drone networks drawn in a box deployments with the thing that we have have ever that we have been doing ever since which is deploying um M networks in this particular

**[13:51]** case let me show you one great example from uh Belgium together with our partner uh City mesh um that is for me right now actually globally the most inspiring and the most insightful drone in a box project City MH is rolling out 70 no network systems so 70 boxes across the whole country of Belgium which are sitting on top of fire stations on top of uh police stations on trailers um throughout the whole country and they are operated from uh from up to five Regional operation Regional remote operation centers um by pilots that work in shift and uh those drones are connected only to the public 4G or 5G Network or to private 4G or 5G networks or also in some particular cases to both the private and the public

**[14:57]** network and that is for me um a brilliant example of of how scaling of uh of commercial operations or scaling of uh uh drawn in a box operations can work you you work throughout a large geographical area with the right Partners uh that know what it means to use a screwdriver so that can support with the local deployment but also with Partners who understand the Telecommunications ecosystem because many of you might not know that City mesh as as our partner is a partner of the first hour for private wiress they understand inside out how a 4G or a 5G network works and they understand how to deploy together with our Nokia experts a drawn in a box solution in a public or private 4G 5G Network so I can only encourage you take a look at what city mesh is doing in Belgium it's uh once again I I have to repeat it because for me this is such an inspiring project

**[16:02]** um it's a um one of the for me most advanced uh Global operation with regards to full Beyond visual line of s side operations with a turn key drawn in a box system very very nice and Prime customers I think I talked about it already we talk about firefighters we talk about police we also talk about utilities overall and um obviously as the blue light sector goes into a kind of saturation curve um the possibility to utilize the deployed systems for other use other than blue light such as industrial parameter security that is obviously growing that is also growing with the expanding regulatory framework and with more and more permits that we are able to obtain in Belgium together with City Mish carrying on towards uh this carrying on towards our actual I would say head theme of NestGen this year

**[17:08]** how to deal with workloads how to deal with AI workloads how to how to shoulder this extremely growing demand of compute power that that our drones and our boxes and our Edge clouds and data centers needs nowadays the Strategic move that that uh that is happening right now is that uh all the compute nodes all the computation is moving very intensively from a central Cloud towards an on-prem edge Cloud that is the movement which we are seeing right now but I believe with the Nvidia chipsets and with the growing compute power and uh more and more evolution of the drones themselves as devices we will see a massive transition of computational workload and or of computation um from on-prem edges towards device edges and late late last but not least then sensory edges and the sensory edges that is something um which are really then our

**[18:10]** drones so the drones are together with the device edges so you can picture today we talk about a cloud and we talk about an edge so the cloud is the data center and will always be the edge is our dock today in the future we will see a device Edge that is going to be the Dock of the future and the sensory Edge is going to be the Drone of the future and with that Evolution you can also think that if you got together the right API framework the right Tools in order to transition compute workloads between all those four elements of your deployment um you will be able to decide with the snip of a finger uh whether it's good to do uh the computation or whether it's important to do the computation right way in the Drone or if it is a non-critical processing task that can be taken on later in the center cloud or also in the edge cloud and um here again I I want to I want to highlight that when going through this uh transition

**[19:17]** with our noad draw networks development where we're clearly focusing on on a strategic move from leading silicon vendors um or to support the Strategic move from leading silicon ERS to add Ai and machine learning capability to the so-called microedge devices that will further on in the future stretch to something uh like gen but for the time being I think our our all Focus for scalable operations but also for the enablement of modular AI compute in in our drones is that we establish this base layer that I'm showing here and that we are all uh ready to migrate to the the future with with the architecture the software and the hardware architecture that is running in all drones with that I'm uh coming basically to the last slide I want to be I want to thank uh the NestGen team for for the brilliant uh organization but I

**[20:22]** also want to say to all all the Drone folks out there the whole drone industry out there um we are in a in a phase of the industry where it is super super critical um to deliver collaborative Advantage um only like our our mission is really to bring together customer and partner ecosystems and to build together with noad dra networks and all the ecosystem Digital Services and applications of the future that make all our lives better and um if you if you want to talk about how to use noad draw networks in your environment or if you also have a software solution that it might be worth to think about doing an integration together we are more than happy to work with you we are more than happy to bring the ecosystem together and um rather work in this growing industry together with you uh instead of all you know siloed or potentially even versus each other that is not our

**[21:22]** approach so um we are happy to be part of that industry we are happy to help m Rising industry as Nokia and uh with that I think anit back to you and thank you very much for all the audience to take time for this session perfect thank you so much thank you so much thas for sharing your insights on how Nokia drones and doing stations are enabling scalability in the Drone operations across multiple use cases actually the insights that you shared regarding the CES case study were truly valuable and inspiring showcasing this actually showcased how other Industries can adopt drones and dogs to enhance their operations and with AI the possibilities are even more exciting and uh without further Ado what I would like to do is uh we have a few questions that I can see in the Q&A section so we can take up some of these questions uh so the first question is uh will these microedge device be on board the Drone I think this is more related to the AI device

**[22:27]** AI microedge device that you talked about in the presentation I I think uh I think I can so will these microedge device be on board the Drone the answer is yes actually if you look at the Drone itself the Drone will be the micro Edge um if you read papers or if you are into this Edge compute ecosystem some users or customers out there also call it the far Edge um which is like the last point in the data in in like the origin ation point of the data that's where you know the furthermost point where you have compute power and we look at the Drone to be in the future the micro Edge or the far Edge so the PC the computational power inside the Drone is the micro Edge or the far Edge perfect perfect thank you so much for answering that question Thomas uh we can take up another question this question is from es uh can the docking station be

**[23:29]** attached on a moving platform where the Drone can land and take off while in motion absolutely yes yes great question we actually have a couple of deployments on trailers um but there have also been assessments for deployment on boats or ships we rely on active sensing technology between the dock and the Drone and uh with the seamless realtime connectivity of 5G we do have the possibility to do this even when in motion there is obviously always a limit you know like if the weather conditions and the wind conditions and uh the movement would be too fast then we at some point hit physical limits of the sensory uh of the sensory Frameworks and all the controllers but but ultimately um our ambition is uh to support moving platforms and and uh landing and take off while in motion as as much as possible perfect understood also uh this is one last question that I can see and uh

**[24:29]** is it do Nokia drones come equipped with an onboard 5G Sim slot if so what is the maximum operational range supported by this connectivity yeah great question the the Drone itself and that's maybe one of the USBs or one of the keys that that we focused on since they one we have the uh the full connectivity stack so the full 4G 5G connectivity stack integrated into the Drone so it is not an additional hook device or an auxiliary the Drone comes fully equipped fully equipped with the 4G 5G connectivity and uh it does have SIM slots it actually has multiple SIM slots because we are able to support up to four four networks at the same time so that there is also a redundancy or the possibility to switch between networks and uh with regards to the second part of the question what is the maximum operational range supported by this connectivity um there is no limit with 4G 5G connectivity ity 4G

**[25:29]** 5G is built up across your country across your city like a like a net like a like a spider net literally and uh the this spider net can cover very very large areas which means you don't have a limitation of the connectivity the only limitation of your operational range becomes the battery so the battery will be your single bottleneck um what is the what is the furthermost place you can fly to um but that can also be mitigated for example with multi- do deployments where you go from dock to dock which is also a super super critical feature we support okay so that was really insightful Thomas because uh I really didn't know that noia drones also have like the docking station hopping operations and that's really great so we have more questions coming in uh in the chat and uh there's one question from Mr NES what is the current scale of operation of talking station and

**[26:29]** what's the most critical things are there to solve for Rapid scale this question is more regarding how we can scale the operations further uh from because a lot of organizations like even while working uh in the EMA region I understand that having one docking station deployments is good but scaling those deployments is a big task so Thomas you would like I would like you to share some light on that yeah um so I think if you scale no matter what you scale if it's a company or if it's thrown in a box or dock operations you first of all need money and uh or or you know a chance to invest because timat you're investing into infrastructure so um and in order to find the right investment uh you need flexible business models such as direct capital investment or also investors that support the infrastructure

**[27:31]** development or last but not least maybe even leasing options that give you the chance to you know like pay off the hardware over time so that you reduce the initial um that you reduce the initial investment as much as possible that's I think the the most critical aspect from uh from uh enabling uh standpoint But like after you have enabled like let's assume you have all the money you need in order to uh in order to scale your operations you need another very important aspect and that is the doing and the doing comes along with the team and the people that are actually involved in the installation and in the buildup of that infrastructure and uh I think after the availability of the necessary funds uh the team behind making that scale happen the skills the the ability to talk both the Telecommunications language as well as drone

**[28:33]** language that is so so much more important and uh uh like actually the most critical success factor or or or factor to to to run into the ability to scale rapidly so number one the funds available and number two the team that actually makes the scaling happening you might want to ask the question Al in the direction of Nokia as such what did Nokia need in order to scale operations or also manufacturing and whatnot but there I simply refer to our industrial setup and the fact that we are an established manufacturer of uh telecommunications equipment since many many years and we are leveraging existing um existing uh manufacturing capacities in our own Factory in order to bring out those those systems for Rapid scale thank you thank you Thomas for taking up that question uh and now we'll take up our

**[29:35]** last question uh is this technology augment satellite Tech like Starling or is redundant capability uh it's a bit hard to understand the question exactly but I can tell that we are not leveraging today's satellite connectivity satellite connectivity in in particular when we talk about tele communication satellites we talk about non-terrestrial networks is something that is still growing and to a certain extent also subject to chipset availability um so we are not leveraging starlink or satellite connectivity today but we are uh with the with the Redundant 4G 5G stack we are able to still secure redundancy with regards to the 4G 5G connectivity which is for the controlling command as well as for the payload data understood perfect uh so I guess we have taken up all the questions and uh lastly I would like

**[30:41]** to thank Thomas uh for being a part of nesen and helping us understand more about the Nokia drone in the Box operations and sharing uh insights on the Cs case study and thank you everyone for attending so any last few words from you Thomas before we close the session this was really inspiring this was a great conversation an kep I'm looking forward to the remaining couple of sessions of nesg and uh great event thank you very much for having me perfect thank you so much Thomas thank you so much every take care bye- bye