- Ericsson is providing the 5G routers used in the SailGP race events
- T-Mobile delivered 5G network slicing and spectrum for the New York event
- The SailGP CTO said that the Swedish vendor works with multiple operators to get access to 5G spectrum worldwide for this event
Ericsson and T-Mobile were on hand in New York City to support 5G data collected from SailGP's F50 catamarans. Fierce Network went along for the ride on Friday, June 7, to get an idea of how the gear works and how the teams use the tech to navigate and win.
In case you don't know, SailGP is a self-proclaimed "nation versus nation, close-to-shore, high speed, high tech racing series like no other." After last weekend, we can confirm this is true.
The use of Ericsson — formerly Cradlepoint — 5G routers on the boats themselves is a fairly niche use of private 5G-adjacent technology. The crews of the catamarans use the 5G data collected to plan races, capturing data as diverse as wind speeds to the angle of elevation of the F50's "wings". Wings are the tall rigid sails of the catamarans.
T-Mobile was also available to provide a 5G network slice and spectrum for the New York race.
SailGP CTO Warren Jones said that Ericsson helped SailGP work with operators, such as T-Mobile in the U.S. and BT in the United Kingdom, which is where the global race is heading next.
"Everything we do is wireless," Jones said. "There's no wires anywhere...all the technology, the Cradlepoints, the antennas, the slicing, everything they got to get all this data into the hands of data centers is wireless," the CTO said.
Even though the data from the boats is routed back and forth between the coaches at the game area and a data center in London, there is "no data loss," Jones claimed.
"Ericsson are killing it," the CTO stated.
Check out Dan Jones' video from the event below.