Vilicom and BAI Communications share the vision of a connected future built on innovation.
Joining the BAI group of companies gives Vilicom the resources to scale up its agile connectivity-as-a-service platform and grows BAI’s capacity to bring innovation to industry, commerce and city living.
Connectivity underpins virtually every aspect of modern life. People want to play games, stream media and connect with family and friends wherever they are. Enterprises are looking to propel their operations into the Industry 4.0 era, making them more productive, smarter, safer and more sustainable. While digitalisation has taken a massive leap forward in recent years, next-generation technologies such as 5G are going to open up whole new horizons.
Vilicom has a lot of experience working with forward-thinking customers in industries from pharmaceuticals and healthcare to manufacturing and offshore power generation. BAI is a world leader in large-scale neutral host networks for smart cities, connected broadcasting, venues and more. This combination of network expertise with industry-specific domain knowledge creates the fertile ground for discovery and innovation that we’re so excited to explore.
What should a network be able to do? Everything.
For cities and industries to reap the full potential of next-wave connected technologies, they need networks with the flexibility to support many applications or use cases. Building for a single purpose can impose constraints that are hard to overcome when new opportunities arise down the road.
In the past few years, we at Vilicom have seen customers spin up amazing tools and solutions by taking advantage of the flexibility their networks afford.
One pharmaceutical manufacturer made it safer for employees to work alone. Giving them connected monitoring devices that can detect a fall or a chemical accident and send help right away. An airport used its network for wireless CCTV monitoring of aircraft stands, replacing the need for miles and miles of cabling. An offshore energy company realised it could use its network for augmented reality-enabled troubleshooting and maintenance. This means remote experts on the mainland can see what technicians offshore are seeing and guide their work from the convenience and safety of their desks. It’s a truly innovative application that has made the overall operation safer and more cost effective.
None of these use cases were the original driver behind installing the network. They all came about after the connectivity was in place, as new possibilities emerged.
Thinking beyond ‘networks’: Connectivity as a service
Over the past few years, we at Vilicom have developed a cloud-based connectivity-as-a-service (CaaS) platform that delivers maximum flexibility to customers while keeping costs down. Now, with the resources of BAI available to us, we’re able to scale up and extend that platform.
Together, we’re also bringing the full toolkit of advanced technologies into play. Including cloud-based Open RAN (ORAN) that speeds up wireless network deployment, artificial intelligence and machine learning for agile rollouts of future-proof networks and service, ultra-fast 4G/5G wireless networking, and versatile distributed antenna systems (DAS) to bring connectivity to hard-to-reach places.
Our CaaS platform and BAI’s neutral host model will allow customers to seize the full advantage of these new technologies and capabilities. Together we will provide organisations with the connectivity to innovate, compete and succeed, backed by strict service-level agreements. 5G is going to shift the ground of what’s possible. It’s a massive leap forward that provides the capacity and response time performance for huge waves of digital transformation in all sectors. The next technological revolution
Falling commodity prices are often a signal of significant socioeconomic change. It was a drop in the price of coal that helped spark the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s. In the mid-1900s, Norman Borlaug’s work to make wheat more productive and less expensive is widely considered the beginning of the Green Revolution.
Our own research has shown that, over the past 10 years, the price of data has fallen by around 98%. That means more can be done with data more cheaply, further driving demand for ubiquitous connectivity. In other words, wide-scale technological transformation seems imminent, and networks are going to be at the heart of the action.
As part of the BAI group of companies, Vilicom will be there to make sure our customers get the very best of what’s coming. We’ll continue to grow to do it, bringing on new team members and supporting existing team members as they take on new roles and responsibilities. That’s something we’ve always prided ourselves on: real career growth opportunities that can start with an internship and lead as far as a seat on our board.
The next technological transformation is coming, and we’re ready. Together, BAI and Vilicom are in a powerful position to do great things, in new markets and on a bigger scale than we could before.
