As the worlds of telcos and drone companies merge, business opportunities multiply  

By Claudia Baco, Contributing editor

These two worlds are coming closer than you can imagine. Telcos are now becoming drone operators with 24/7 flight management centers. Providing data to enable safe and scalable drone flights is not just a “service” from the telcos, it becomes part of a new business opportunity for them. Going one step beyond this, we’ve just seen a recent announcement where telcom networks can be used to adjunct existing aviation safety solutions.

Dimetor has recently announced its NavSentry – automated, live global navigation satellite service (GNSS) spoofing/jamming monitoring & detection solution. This is a topic most often associated with air traffic management (ATM) from the perspective of passenger aircraft, but this is also important when it comes to uncrewed traffic management (UTM).

Drones don’t have pilots onboard and have to rely on reported positioning data for making de-confliction decisions. Without a pilot to correct a position that seems incorrect, there is potential for property damage or even deadly consequences.

NavSentry relies on telcom mobile networks acting as a sensing network to provide GNSS-independent location information. Another example of a service that telcoms can offer to drone operators as a failsafe to their traditional location information.

Unmanned Airspace had the opportunity to speak with Thomas Neubauer, CEO & Co-Founder, Dimetor about the linkage between telecommunications networks and drones. And more specifically the role that 5G can play. In short, his view was “telcos are in the business of delivering data.”

Building on this, the discussion began with ‘drones as first responders’ and their need for data from telcos to ensure safety and scalability. They need to know where people are and telco SIMs provide an alternative form of positioning. “Telcos know where a SIM is. Reliable positioning reduces the opportunities for malicious spoofing,” said Neubauer. Some governments even run dedicated networks for first responders to ensure adequate connectivity and positioning is in place.

As far as the 4G/5G discussion goes, it really depends on the mission the drone is flying. The latency with a 4G communication is about 10 milliseconds, whereas 5G is about 1 millisecond. That sounds like it’s not a very big difference, but there are added benefits to 5G. Some of these include additional spectrum, increased frequencies for antennas, network slicing dedicated to specific applications and in some new releases of 5G there are digital airspace features. This topic is worthy of an entire article to address the roles of 5G in digital airspace. Going beyond BVLOS, this can also have applications in traditional air traffic management functionality.

As far as location accuracy for first responders, a range of 20 – 150 metres of accuracy is acceptable. 4G can provide around 50 metres of accuracy and 5G could improve this. Either way, these technologies can help first responders reach their destination more accurately.