• NTT Data provided digital twin and private 5G to The Open
• It demonstrated the value of B2B2X and ecosystems
• Temporary event activations highlight the customer experience
• The event acted as a showcase for enterprise verticals and telco applications

The 152nd Open golf concluded on Sunday with a victory for American Xander Schauffele. Over the course of four days, players battled the elements at the Royal Troon course in Scotland. As is the case with all such events, the host venue was transformed into a highly connected city, to support both the infrastructure and the needs of the reported 258,000 attending fans. Driving this connectivity are a number of communications networks, each pushing their capabilities to the max and acting as live testbeds for new services and their supporting technology.

Whilst telcos may have been relegated to a supporting role (there were no operator sponsor patrons at the event), mainly having to deal with a significant spike in consumer mobile demand around the remote Scottish coastal site, there was much to learn. Any telco claiming to know and understand its customers (consumer or enterprise) and confident that it provides the best possible customer experience needs to take a close look at those four days in Royal Troon.

Yes, the organisers – the R&A (Royal and Ancient) – want to enhance the fan experience, both for those onsite and for those watching remotely. That's apparent in the work done to create dynamic scoreboards and virtual enhancements, such as shot tracking. But it also wants to use technology to improve its future competitions, such as data-based analysis of how holes play, which can then be used to justify changes to the course. This all needs high quantity and quality data.

NTT Data has enjoyed a decade-long partnership with the R&A and has been instrumental in collecting and analysing the required data. For this year's event, it enhanced its ShotView service with digital twin technology, which has the ability to derive deep insights from real-time data. For golf, it means recreating the 18 holes in exact detail, utilising drones and lidar to map the course and triangulated cameras to plot the action. Its application across industry types is well underway (including RAN planning for telcos) to increase efficiency, productivity and identify new service opportunities.

All of this gets added to its Data Wall, with real-time graphical rendering of the course mapped and an AI prioritisation algorithm to ensure the most important shots are shown the instant they occur. The data is routed via infrastructure provider Cisco and a public cloud hyperscaler with a transit time of less than 100 milliseconds. To ensure minimum latency and to avoid congestion issues with the Wi-Fi network, a private 5G network was installed for the first time at the event, routing the numerous data sources to the Data Wall control room. 

According to NTT Data, the network-in-a-box equipment was set up in days, using a temporary licence for 3.7GHz spectrum (at a ludicrously low cost). The wheeled flight case weighs in at just 60kg and comes equipped with the necessary core router, radio and edge servers, running a DevOps environment for flexible application use.

Private 5G

The private 5G network was not used for capturing ball tracking, which is undertaken by a specialist company, but given that the NTT Data team say they can use it to instantly locate cameras down to a centimetre or so accuracy (a process that currently takes weeks for an event like this), it probably won't be long before it is implemented. And whilst shot tracking is a rather niche service, there are many computer vision and camera-based monitoring/measuring applications being used by enterprises. Just look at Las Vegas, which lays claim to having the largest private 5G network in the US, and its use for crowd analysis and security.

Back then, to the customer experience and meeting their needs. No enterprise customer ever said that their most pressing problem was lack of private 5G. The technology is merely a means to deliver a solution to their actual problems and business challenges.

"We first understand the problems of the industry, then work with consultants and design teams on a solution, and only then do we look at what is the right technology required," explained Tom Winstanley, CTO and head of new ventures at NTT Data UK&I.

Speaking to TelecomTV, he revealed how his company approaches “activations” such as The Open. “Some of the technology here is just the right stuff that makes sense for the R&A. It’s not necessarily super cutting edge, it’s just solving a problem. It’s making an impact and creating a win for the client as well as for the fans. Of course, we also use this as a testing bed for some new technology.

“The technologies that we apply here – enhancing customer experiences, enhancing data analytics, real-time data analytics and decision-making tools – is 100% our core business as a consultant and systems integrator,” he added. “If we want to explain to a manufacturer why private 5G is relevant for them and that it’s not a colossal pain, we show them the network-in-a-box that, yes, is designed for these temporary installations, but you can just bring this and drop it into a factory tomorrow and get it running.

“Like most other organisations, we started our private 5G journey in manufacturing and the automotive industry,” said Winstanley. “But the view was that the typical experience of installing, deploying and then managing was just prohibitive for the kind of experimentation necessary to make it work, which is why we ended up building variants that allow you to do it really rapidly and at a sensible price point. For a national telco, doing this at scale is the challenge. But what we are seeing is that the pull is from the application, rather than ‘okay let's deploy this and then test it and they will come’.”

B2B2X and the ecosystem

What these microcosm events, such as The Open, demonstrate is the potential power of the ecosystem and tiered value across a range of partners and customers. You can clearly see the business-to-business-to-any (B2B2X) model at work; the R&A client gains value, as do their customers – the fans – who come for the ultimate pro golf experience. It’s this inter-exchange of value, service provision for data, that is the ultimate prize.

“How can we build value exchange?” asks Winstanley. “Let’s do that by B2B2X; let’s build networks and alliances that are going to help us drive that value, let’s not try to do it all ourselves because we’ll fail. Let’s do some strategic collaborations.

“You build value for the B2C [business-to-consumer] customers and value for the B2B [business-to-business] customers. And the value that the B2B customer gives to the B2C customers is such that the B2C customers are willing to give their data to the B2B. So it’s a flywheel, and that’s something that I think many telcos have tried and many have failed. It’s about the ecosystem and being able to manage that.”

And that’s not something that telcos have been historically good at doing... 

- Guy Daniels, Director of Content, TelecomTV