Nokia and Elisa joined forces to develop private mobile networks for Finnish enterprises, in an effort to boost digital transformation of the business sector.

In a statement, the vendor said the tie-up will “drive industrial-grade private mobile network deployment” covering 5G technology, along with market development to accelerate organisations’ digitalisation efforts.

The companies will deploy mission-critical private networks based on new and existing radio network infrastructure.

Efforts will be initially focused on the maritime and ports sectors, mining, manufacturing, logistics and utilities.

Nokia said the aim is to bring “automation, safety and productivity gains” for businesses by deploying IoT, machine learning and AI on private networks.

In its own statement, Elisa highlighted the role of customer-specific mobile networks to guarantee “the bandwidth, data transfer speed and short delay agreed for the use of the organisation”.

Elisa’s EVP of corporate customers Timo Katajisto said the collaboration will “take private network implementations to a new level”.

Raghav Sahgal, president of Nokia Cloud and Network Services, added the pair will drive mobile networking growth “and establish Finland as a leader in this field”.

The collaboration is part of a long-term partnership between the companies.