Vodafone is focused on building a digital society for the future and is leveraging its 5G core in the UK to make this happen. In order to drive the best customer experience and realise operational efficiencies Vodafone used AW3D satellite data supplied by NTT DATA to create a Digital Twin of the entire UK in stunning detail.
They created a 3-D 360 degree model of the buildings, infrastructure and vegetation across the UK to enable them to build a highly accurate view of network connectivity. This model also looks at the impact of the topography and new buildings on network propagation and clutter. NTT DATA worked with Vodafone so that all this data could be easily visualised and analysed in Esri ArcGIS Enterprise so the impact of the changes to over 500,000 network assets can now be easily tracked, modelled and understood.
Vodafone is using the digital twin to get a better understanding of the overall network environment at the same time as allowing its engineers to have a better view of the network and its surroundings. This in turn will also contribute to fewer site visits in the longer term helping with Vodafone’s commitment to help save on CO2 emissions as part of their sustainability commitment.
Vodafone recently won a Customer Success Award (Map Creator category) at the Esri UK conference in London, the UK's largest GIS event, for its 3D Digital Twin of the UK.
Using AW3D satellite map data supplied by NTT DATA and loaded into Esri’s ArcGIS Enterprise suite in Amazon Web Services cloud, we were able to model the performance of the 5g network and the impact of the environment including; buildings, bridges and vegetation. We achieved this by modelling the entire country in 3D to assist, for example, we were able to understand where to optimise the network and place new 5G towers.