At Newmont’s Boddington gold mine in Western Australia—one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere—Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solutions is helping transform daily operations through next‑generation connectivity. As the site shifted toward autonomous mining, the team needed a connectivity platform capable of supporting high‑bandwidth devices, mobile assets, and low‑latency decision‑making. Earlier attempts using Wi‑Fi couldn’t keep pace with moving equipment, changing terrain, and line‑of‑sight challenges. The introduction of scalable private 4G and 5G connectivity, enabled in partnership with Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solutions, quickly proved to be a turning point.
The advanced network now connects cameras, fixed and mobile assets, perception systems, and the autonomous fleet itself—delivering the stable, low‑latency performance the mine couldn’t achieve before. According to site leaders, the improved connectivity backbone has eliminated common handover issues, reduced interference, and ensured operations can adapt as the mine evolves. With reliable coverage across pits, haul roads, and dumps at varying elevations, teams can coordinate work sequences more effectively and build a foundation for future innovations.
Safety sits at the heart of the mine’s autonomous strategy, and Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solutions plays a central role in supporting that mission. By keeping workers out of high‑risk areas and away from heavy equipment, autonomy—combined with dependable communications—has significantly reduced exposure to hazards. What once required long commutes, two-way radios and manual coordination is now driven by integrated systems and real‑time connectivity. In just four years, Boddington has become a showcase for how modern mining can operate when world‑class wireless infrastructure powers every step.
Steve Saunders:
This is Boddington in Western Australia, and it's home to one of the largest gold mines in the Southern Hemisphere. And it's also a leader in innovative mining technology.
So that's everything which is running and all the connections between.
Matt Philbey:
That's exactly right. So this is the exact same as that the assets are actually a replica of the mine site.
Steve Saunders:
Right.
Matt Philbey:
5G is essential to that. So it's all our cameras, our infrastructure, our fixed and non-fixed assets.
Steve Saunders:
And you were trying to do this on Wi-Fi before?
Matt Philbey:
Oh, yeah.
Steve Saunders:
The same thing as I would use in my coffee shop.
Matt Philbey:
Exactly right.
Steve Saunders:
How did that go?
Matt Philbey:
It was not great. So yeah, the first two years of autonomy here at Boddington was difficult due to Wi-Fi, especially handover and problems with low latency and saturation and things like that. So it's been the biggest thing that solved our mining operations here has been 5G, 4G.
Steve Saunders:
Because it's a classic next generation edge network, isn't it? Because everything's moving.
Matt Philbey:
Everything's moving. The mine's evolving. Different work areas and dumps are going higher and lower. So there's line-of-sight issues, and you've got altitude. Altitude, yep. So there was signal interference. There's a lot of systems that run in correlation to the different frequencies, so we've got to obviously be careful of that. And 5G's really solved up for us to give us that high bandwidth and low latency kind of connectivity we need to mine now and into the future.
Steve Saunders:
Really?
Matt Philbey:
Yep.
Steve Saunders:
Oh, that's encouraging, isn't it?
Matt Philbey:
Yep.
Steve Saunders:
And this is an autonomous operation. What does that actually mean, Matt?
Matt Philbey:
So to me, it's safety first. So it's about people getting out of the pit, out of high-risk areas. So autonomy is a mixture of in-field communications. It's a mixture of people with sequences of work together that form the sequence of mining. So for me, it's about trying to get as safe as we can and remove people from harm's way. So that's really important. And obviously production and other requirements.
Steve Saunders:
Yeah. I mean, one thing which I didn't really understand about the mine here was that actually when you had people at the bottom of it, they had to commute there.
Matt Philbey:
Yeah, absolutely. It's an hour.
Steve Saunders:
Really?
Matt Philbey:
Yeah, it's an hour trip.
Steve Saunders:
And that's just dead air, isn't it?
Matt Philbey:
Dead air. It's interaction with autonomous assets as well. But they have great perception systems, path-on-path prediction. So it ultimately causes no incidences and keeps everything as safe as absolutely possible.
Steve Saunders:
You guys are fanatical about safety, right?
Matt Philbey:
Absolutely. "Always safe" is a big slogan for us. It's something we live by.
Steve Saunders:
And this is making it a reality, isn't it?
Matt Philbey:
Yeah, absolutely. So there's a lot of coordination, like I said, there's a lot of backend management. There's so many people involved. It's not just one thing, a simple piece of software that runs autonomy. It takes a whole site, a whole village, a whole team.
Steve Saunders:
How would you have done this before all of this technology before '21?
Matt Philbey:
Oof. Probably wouldn't have even looked at, to be honest.
Steve Saunders:
Yeah. Would've been a lot of walkie-talkies and-
Matt Philbey:
Walkie-talkies.
Steve Saunders:
... a lot of shouting.
Matt Philbey:
Yeah, probably. And it's funny you say that because I was looking at an old photo album for Boddington, and it was people in shorts, stubbies, and thongs. So we've come a long way to where we are now.
Steve Saunders:
It's based in a much higher level of sartorial elegance.
Matt Philbey:
Absolutely. So now it's very much a focus, but I think obviously it's taken a story and a history to get to this point. It's taken a lot of great people involved to get to that as well. And these are all world-first technologies and getting a stable platform with our field communications has been an absolute game changer for Boddington.
Steve Saunders:
And it sounds like 5G was a really important part.
Matt Philbey:
It's so huge. It's added so much more relief to how we work and how we work in the field. There's so many devices, so many different gizmos and gadgets working that we need to make sure it's got the kind of throughput we need and can build on in the future.
Steve Saunders:
Yeah. I'll tell you something. I mean, the fact that you've only had this for four years, right? It's an extraordinary achievement. It really is. Yeah. Thank you for sharing it with us. It was a privilege.
Matt Philbey:
Absolutely.
Steve Saunders:
Cheers, mate.
Matt Philbey:
No worries.
Steve Saunders:
Thank you.
Matt Philbey:
Cheers.