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The world’s first 5G-oriented smart diamond mine project has been unveiled, by connecting over 260 pieces of equipment at the Jwaneng mine, in Botswana. Debswana and Huawei jointly established this project that aims to make mine production safer, more efficient, and more intelligent.
Jwaneng mine is owned by Debswana, a partnership between the De Beers company and the government of Botswana. This is the richest diamond mine in the world and is located in south-central Botswana about 120 kilometers west of the city of Gaborone, in the Naledi river valley of the Kalahari.
The Huawei-enabled smart mine solution has been deployed at Debswana’s Jwaneng open-pit diamond mine, and the project started operation in December 2021. Before this solution was adopted, the previous solution had two limitations. First, it had limited coverage. Second, it used public wireless frequencies and had less robust anti-interference capabilities. As a result, the mine’s different types of data could not be transferred stably in real-time.
Now the hardware equipment such as base stations used in the mine’s digital transformation solution support network upgrades to 5G. 5G features like high bandwidth and low latency can support the application of cutting-edge technologies like autonomous driving, enabling the more intelligent digital transformation of the mining industry in the future.
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Debswana’s Head of Information Management Molemisi Nelson Sechaba said that it is important to deploy the eLTE solution to connect mining equipment more stably. There are two reasons for this. The first is efficiency. The ability to transfer data in real-time makes equipment like mining vehicles more efficient, increasing yield and reducing long-term OPEX. Second, the solution helped improve safety. Real-time data collection, backhaul, and interaction make the system more sensitive and accurate to provide more reliable protection for staff and vehicles.
