Newmont Corporation used Ericsson infrastructure to conduct the first deployment of a remote-controlled bulldozer fleet over a private 5G network at its gold and copper mine in New South Wales, Australia.

Use of tele-remote dozing at the Cadia mine is positioned as being a world first for private 5G and forms part of an ongoing project by the mining player to use mobile network infrastructure to support operations and increase safety on its sites.

Describing the latest feat, Ericsson noted its customer had “overcome the limitations previously encountered with Wi-Fi to meet the productivity potential of multiple dozers, achieve new levels of machine productivity and keep workers safe”.

Using Wi-Fi, the miner was apparently unable to connect more than two machines at a range of no more than 100 metres. It was also unstable and prone to chunks of downtime.

Ericsson noted with its kit, Newmont was able to connect its fleet across a work area of up to 2.5km from a single radio. The 175Mb/s uplink throughput delivered is able to support up to 12 dozers.

The move is the latest between the two centred around the use of private 5G for mining.

In August 2024, Newmont unveiled plans to expand its use of 5G, having conducted a trial with Ericsson and consultancy Telstra Purple to assess if the mobile network could provide an improvement on the Wi-Fi based connectivity it had in place.

Newmont’s ultimate ambition for the project is the digital transformation of its operations to deliver 5G smart mining applications at its top tier sites across the globe.