Boost your business

Almost two years ago, fiber was installed in the industrial area where Schevenels Project Interieurs is located.

For the company, the new, high-speed connection offers several advantages. "First of all, we work with VoIP, so all our telephony runs through the new line. That means that a fast and stable connection is very useful.

We are also using more and more cloud applications for our invoicing and inventory management. The smoothest possible access to those applications is important to us. Fiber guarantees that."

"We also recently made an acquisition in Bruges. We connect their IT systems to our systems via a VPN, along our fiber line. That, of course, also requires a stable and fast connection."

The employees of architectural firm CAAN are already enjoying the benefits of an ultrafast connection in their office in Ghent. “We have a lot of heavy files and we often have to edit them with memory-intensive programs. These files are stored locally in our server room, but we want to be able to deduplicate them regularly to another location. That is why we chose fiber. For storage to the server and backup to the remote deduplicated server, the fiber connection certainly comes in handy. Imagine having a severe crash during backup, which you could have avoided with a faster connection.”

The faster and more stable connection is also no luxury for communication with the outside world, according to Wannes Philips. “We cannot go a moment without mails or access to information. We can use quite a bit of bandwidth for our mails, with the often large files we have to send. We attach files up to 6 MB in the mail and use Wetransfer for larger files. The time you save with a fiber connection is quite impressive for an agency like ours.”

Innovation is the answer to the many challenges facing the logistics sector today, especially in e-commerce. The sector is facing ever shorter delivery times, staff shortages and rising transport costs. In that context, 5G plays an important role as an enabler for innovations, such as warehouse robots and artificial intelligence.

Mabo is a manufacturer of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) connected to 5G. These self-propelled forklifts are used to automatically move pallets and other goods within a warehouse. They are available 24/7 and can be easily customized to meet customer needs.

But an innovative solution is not deployable if its safety is not guaranteed. The 5G network provides that guarantee, for example in the control and traffic monitoring of AGVs. "Through the low latency of 5G, AGVs can react very quickly, and thus stop in time and avoid accidents", says Jens Roevens of Mabo Engineering & Automation. Clearly, 5G plays a key role in the creation of these AGVs and the optimization of logistics.

Watertechniek Teunissen specializes in pump systems and water management techniques. The company has sites in Hasselt and Overpelt, employing 17 people.

"All our IT is centralized in Overpelt," says Erwin Cuppens. "All the applications run there, from cash till systems and the webshop to camera surveillance." This configuration relies heavily on the performance and availability of the network connection. "We often had problems in the past," Erwin goes on. "Sometimes it took ages to print a purchase order in the shop and the video surveillance images were seriously delayed, simply because the data were sent via a conventional internet line."

Watertechniek Teunissen switched to fiber. "The difference compared with the way things used to be could not be greater. The line is perfectly stable. There is no longer any latency." All the staff now have easy access to the business applications on the central server and the webshop is also developing into an important sales channel. For Watertechniek Teunissen, the switch to fiberglass was a logical choice. "Speed is essential in our sector. We have everything in stock to be able to serve customers immediately. The digital side of things just had to keep up."

Outpost operates three cyber and gaming cafés in Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent. For them, a fast, stable Internet connection is an absolute lifeline, says IT manager Willy Geerts.

In Outpost's cafés, there are many people gaming and surfing at the same time throughout the day. "That means that we need to have enough bandwidth to offer all those customers an optimal experience," says Willy Geerts. "Using Fiber means that that is not a problem."

Outpost has already gone through various connection technologies and adapts its choice according to need. "We have already had copper, VDSL, cable ... When our customer base grows, we often have to look for a new technology. We always pick the ones that perform the best. Fiber will serve us well."

"The high upload speed is important because we create the images or code of the video games locally for each branch, Brussels or Ghent, remotely," explains Geerts. "We used to do that via a Content Delivery Network. First from Antwerp to the CDN and from there to Brussels and Ghent. It drastically reduces both the cost of the infrastructure and the working hours."

I-care, a world leader in machine health, uses AI and data to anticipate industrial failures, minimising losses due to unexpected breakdowns.

I-care has developed an application that predicts malfunctions and wear and tear on parts via sensors connected to 5G. Tested at the A6K research centre with Proximus NXT and Multitel, this innovation enables continuous and effective monitoring of equipment, measuring temperature, vibrations and other critical parameters in real time.

5G enables enhanced management of IoT devices, offering optimal security and performance. According to Thomas Di Pietro, R&D Director at I-care, 5G multiplies the deployment capacity of sensors by a hundred. Frédéric Renette of Proximus NXT highlights the advantages of a private 5G network for businesses, in terms of security and reliability.

The Proof of Concept carried out at A6K demonstrated the effectiveness of this technology and the robustness of multi-actor collaboration. Despite the technical challenges, the partners overcame the obstacles by iterating numerous times, reinforcing their expertise in predictive maintenance.

This project proves the added value of 5G for industry, paving the way for future applications in augmented reality, remote communication and much more.