The IT Nerd

 SailGP, the most exciting racing on water, is set to benefit from the fastest mobile connectivity possible as the SailGP F50 catamaran fleet teams up with Ericsson at iconic venues across the globe in 2025. 

Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solutions will provide teams and personnel with seamless, high-quality 5G connectivity, improving fan experiences and race operations. Additionally, the solutions will support SailGP umpires to adjudicate on race protocol through the enhanced capabilities of 5G-enabled live camera streaming from competing F50s and insights into team locations, tactics, and strategy. 

Split-second human responses across the various teams will make the difference between victory and defeat across the SailGP fleet. To support those decisions, each team will have access to the fastest connectivity possible under some of the most challenging physical conditions. Ericsson’s solutions deliver instant real-time data and statistical feedback, despite the F50s reaching speeds up to 100 km (about 62.14 mi) per hour over open waters. 

Ericsson’s Cradlepoint edge routers – installed in the wings of each F50 – are expected to handle more than 53 billion data points across the fleet per race day, including IoT, video and critical communications from competing boats connecting to Ericsson Private 5G during each race day. It was important that 5G connectivity solutions could be deployed across a diverse landscape and connect to multiple carriers. They also required a ruggedized edge router in each F50 that could withstand rough maritime conditions. For the safety of the athletes and the boat, neither may leave the dock until the F50 and its crew are fully connected and communicating.

SailGP initially worked with Ericsson and T-Mobile to test and deploy the Ericsson Private 5G solution over T-Mobile’s 5G spectrum at U.S. events in Season 4. The solution will be installed and deployed in all F50s and rolled out globally for the 2025 season. Key outcomes include:

• Performance Optimization: The real-time transport of extensive data between off- and on-shore teammates on boat speed, wind conditions, and other factors, allowing real-time data analysis to maximize speed and efficiency by adjusting sail settings and boat trim.
• Enhanced Tactical Decision-Making: The immediate availability of data on race position, course layout, and wind direction enables teams to make informed tactical decisions during races, such as choosing optimal sailing angles, deciding when to tack or gybe, and strategizing for mark roundings.
• Increased Fairness and Transparency: The real-time transportation of data directly and securely into Oracle Cloud (OCI) enables racers to share data with all teams, including boat speed, wind direction and course layout, and race position. This helps SailGP prevent any unfair advantages and promotes fair competition.
• Enhanced Spectator Engagement: Data sharing and improved bandwidth also enhance the spectator experience by providing insights into the intricacies of sailing tactics and strategy, making races more engaging and understandable for viewers.
  

You can learn more about how Ericsson’s 5G solutions support SailGP here.

Ericsson today announced the launch of its generative AI-based NetCloud Assistant (ANA). This next generation of ANA is a virtual expert designed to further simplify enterprise 5G network administration. Unlike traditional chatbots, which leverage search to provide links to existing resources, ANA stands out with the ability to read, understand, and generate new text and graphical content. ANA provides personalized responses by correlating information from multiple technical documents and unique insights from the customer’s network, transforming hours or even days of work into seconds. 

ANA is the first generative AI virtual expert designed for enterprise Wireless WAN (WWAN) networks, utilizing large language models, with all its AI components hosted entirely within Ericsson’s environment. This design ensures user and data privacy by avoiding API calls to third-party consumer generative AI applications. 

Key functionalities of ANA:  

• Knowledge Summarization: Correlates information from Ericsson’s library of technical documentations into concise summaries personalized to the customer’s network.
• Configuration Assistance: Accelerates Day 1 deployments with step-by-step guidance for WAN edge device configuration based on best practices.  
• Enhanced Troubleshooting: Automates common diagnostic tasks and provides step-by-step instructions to troubleshoot and resolve connectivity issues, speeding up mean time to repair. 
• Policy Recommendation: Future releases will translate business requirements into recommended SD-WAN and WAN bonding policies to enhance WAN performance and application availability.  
• Custom Graph Generation: Future releases will allow administrators to ask ANA to create detailed graphs that visualize more complex information not typically available in standard NetCloud dashboards or pre-canned reports. 

ANA complements Ericsson’s NetCloud AIOps dashboard which serves as a vital component in transforming network management. Through an intelligent fault management system, it detects performance-driven anomalies, such as latency and jitter, specific to each customer’s specific environment. By providing real-time insights into network performance, AIOps empowers IT teams to proactively address issues, leveraging ANA as needed, to ensure optimal network operations and enhance the overall digital experience. 

New ANA features and the NetCloud AIOps dashboard are available for demonstration at Ericsson’s NRF 2025 booth #3948. Both features will evolve to support Ericsson Private 5G solutions.  

For more details:  

• Read the blog post  
• Visit the webpage