Indra and MASMOVIL join forces to create an innovative ecosystem to drive the development of advanced 5G solutions and services for transportation

Indra, a leading global technology engineering company for the aerospace, defence and mobility sectors, has signed a collaboration agreement with MASMOVIL, one of the leading 5G operators in Spain, to drive smarter, more connected and sustainable mobility through the development of advanced solutions and services based on 5G communications for different modes of transport.

Both companies will create a test site, a new innovation space for validation and testing at Indra's facilities in the Community of Madrid, equipped with state-of-the-art 5G technology and the necessary hardware and software to deploy and validate new smart mobility solutions and services that can later be transferred to a real environment.

Indra and MASMOVIL have already collaborated in different innovation initiatives in the field of autonomous cars and solutions for Low Emission Zones and their real-time measurement that encourage more sustainable mobility. In addition to strengthening this relationship, the agreement aims to turn the new 5G environment into a space for open collaboration with startups, SMEs and universities, facilitating the development of RDI activities, proofs of concept, demonstrators and pilots to exploit the full potential of the 5G network in solutions for more connected mobility.

5G is a key technology for the new smart and sustainable mobility. In Spain, all transport infrastructures, airports, railroad stations and roads are expected to have 5G by 2025 and, for the European Commission, the deployment and development of transport corridors with this technology (5G Corridors) for connected and autonomous mobility is a priority.

“This agreement with a leading operator like MASMOVIL offers us the opportunity to add capabilities to accelerate the development and deployment of a new generation of solutions, based on 5G, which will represent a qualitative leap in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals on the basis of sustainable, connected, autonomous, accessible and green mobility, both in the transportation of people and in the movement of goods. The Next Generation funds are the opportunity that all the agents involved in mobility must know how to take advantage of responsibly, through public-private cooperation, to make the pilots and projects that will change the mobility of tomorrow a reality today,” states Berta Barrero, Managing Director of Indra's Mobility business.

Pablo Freire, Chief Strategy Officer of MASMOVIL Group, emphasizes that “MASMOVIL Group is strongly committed to the development of new 5G services, supporting and encouraging applications that allow them to exploit all their capabilities. In this context, the agreement with Indra, a leading technology engineering company, will allow us to support the development of solutions in one of the sectors, transportation and connected mobility, in which the application of 5G together with 4.0 technologies such as Big Data, Edge Computing, IoT and AI will mean a great revolution.”

5G technology increases the speed of communication services by about 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps), reduces communication latency to between 1 and 4 milliseconds and makes multi-user and multi-connection services possible. In addition, it offers greater network hedge and capacity, and improved application performance. It generates a large volume of data that can be exploited thanks to big data and facilitates distributed data processing for real-time applications. It also contributes to a significant reduction in energy consumption.

New generation of Mobility solutions

Among the new developments to be addressed at the new test site are solutions to reinforce road safety in view of the advent of connected and autonomous mobility, through secure communications between vehicles and infrastructure that allow optimal real-time sharing of data on the traffic situation, congestion, incidents, obstacles on the road and emergency braking. All this without the need for a massive deployment of equipment on the road, thanks to the advantages of Edge Computing.

In the rail sector, work will focus on wireless communication services to promote digitization and new railway signaling services, cargo inspection and rolling stock monitoring. As for the urban and interurban environment, it will apply 5G technology to improve video surveillance services in stations and inside buses. 

With a global approach, future developments aimed at optimizing asset management and massive data downloads for intelligent infrastructure maintenance will be promoted. For example, it is planned to create a digital twin in which data are updated in real time to plan and undertake maintenance tasks more efficiently according to the specific conditions of the infrastructure at any given time. 

In addition, the advantages of digitalization and 5G will be exploited to improve the user experience, to offer total support to travelers at all stages of their journey, to provide entertainment services and Wi-Fi connectivity, online purchases of transport tickets and real-time validation with biometric technology.

These developments will benefit from the previous experience of Indra and MASMOVIL in different proofs of concept with transport operators and in innovation projects in collaboration with vehicle manufacturers. For example, Indra and MASMOVIL are part of the consortium of the R3CAV RDI project, led by Renault, in which they contribute with their technology to enable high levels of automated driving (L4), improve bus management, safety and passenger service, making use of 5G technology.

About Indra

Indra (www.indracompany.com) is one of the leading global technology and consulting companies and the technological partner for core business operations of its customers worldwide. It is a world-leader in providing proprietary solutions in specific segments in Transport and Defence markets, and a leading firm in Digital Transformation and Information Technologies in Spain and Latin America through its affiliate Minsait. Its business model is based on a comprehensive range of proprietary products, with a high-value, end-to-end focus and with a high innovation component. In the 2021 financial year, Indra achieved revenue of €3.390 billion, had nearly 52,000 employees, a local presence in 46 countries and business operations in over 140 countries.

About MASMOVIL Group
MASMOVIL Group is the operator that has led growth in Spain in recent years, offering fixed telephony, mobile telephony, broadband Internet, Agile TV and other new services such as energy, health, alarms and financial services for residential customers, companies and operators, through its main brands: Yoigo, Pepephone, MASMOVIL, Lebara, Lycamobile, Llamaya and Virgin telco, and the regional brands Euskaltel, R, Telecable, Embou and Guuk. 

In Portugal, MASMOVIL has the Nowo brand, which offers landline and mobile telecommunication services to residential customers.

The Group is not a traditional infrastructure-heavy operator; however, it offers its customers access to the largest FTTH hedge in more than 27 million homes and 3G, 4G and 5G mobile networks to 98.5% of the Spanish population thanks to its hybrid strategy of combining its own and third-party infrastructure.  

In addition, MASMOVIL has launched its 5G services, which are already available in nearly 900 municipalities in Spain. The Group had 14.9 million customers at the end of the first half of 2022, including Euskaltel.

MASMOVIL Group has been awarded on several occasions as the best broadband and fiber optic operator. Furthermore, it is the operator with the fastest fiber network in Spain, according to a study by the company nPerf and the one that offers the best landline services.

MASMOVIL achieved net zero carbon emissions in 2020 and also in 2021, including the Euskaltel Group in the calculation, making it the first telecommunications operator in Europe to achieve this goal and the one with the lowest absolute residual level of emissions. It is also the first telecommunications company in Europe to become a B Corp company.

MASMOVIL has been owned by Cinven, KKR and Providence Equity Partners since November 2020 with the goal of accelerating the Group's investment strategy.