Daily news

HEAVY.AI Teams with Bain, Maxar, and NVIDIA to Provide High-Fidelity Digital Twins for Telecom Networks

February 16, 2023

HEAVY.AI announced it is expanding its collaboration with NVIDIA to include global management consulting firm Bain & Company and Maxar, a provider of comprehensive space solutions and secure, precise, geospatial intelligence. This collaboration will provide communication service providers (CSPs) with faster and more accurate tools for determining antenna placements, assuring optimal signal coverage and enabling greater efficiencies in network deployments.

This expands on HEAVY.AI’s existing endeavor with NVIDIA, which includes HEAVY.AI’s HeavyRF solution built on the NVIDIA Omniverse platform announced last fall. The addition of Bain and Maxar will further streamline telco deployments by creating more accurate and detailed digital twins faster.

“By connecting the diverse data streams from Maxar, Bain’s integrated expertise and coupling them with the compute power from HEAVY.AI and NVIDIA, this collaboration enables telcos to make nationwide business decisions through a single screen with up-to-the-minute insights,” said Jon Kondo, CEO of HEAVY.AI. “This ensures telcos are making the best business decisions that serve not only their regional needs but national strategy as well.”

Leveraging Maxar’s high-resolution Precision3D geodata built from its industry-leading satellite imagery, NVIDIA Omniverse and Bain’s extensive domain knowledge and data-driven insights, CSP planners now have access to network digital twins that provide next-level insights to drive business decisions. HeavyRF enables customers to model signal propagation on top of Maxar’s high-resolution 50 centimeter clutter height data interactively at a regional, national or global scale, delivering unprecedented possibilities for telecommunications planning across the globe. This means planners can simulate future cell sites, enabling them to choose the best location based on coverage achieved. Digital twin simulations help telcos save time and money by optimizing the planning process and improving the quality of decision-making, ultimately maximizing their return on invested capital.

By improving the resolution, accuracy and speed of the data collection and analysis process, HeavyRF revolutionizes telcos’ access to reliable historic and real-time network performance data and insights. When Maxar’s Precision3D geodata is combined with Bain’s demographic and behavioral data expertise, and supercharged by HEAVY.AI and NVIDIA’s compute power, telcos can improve and accelerate business decision-making without delays resulting from batch data deliveries and increased compute requirements for these simulation applications.

“Communication service provider planners have previously been challenged by a lack of easily accessible data that conveys the nuances of the built and natural environments on Earth. Maxar’s Precision3D geodata serves as a high-resolution digital twin of Earth, enabling signal propagation and cell site placement to be accurately simulated,” said Dan Nord, Maxar’s SVP and GM of Enterprise Earth Intelligence. “Other RF software programs can’t handle the weight of our 3D geodata at this resolution, resulting in an extremely lengthy processing time. The collaboration between Maxar, Bain, NVIDIA and HEAVY.AI solves this challenge for telcos. HeavyRF, built on the NVIDIA Omniverse platform, allows us to continue unlocking the promise of space to help solve problems on Earth.” 

Without reliable data during the planning phase, it can be difficult for telcos to guarantee network investments will deliver at scale throughout their lifetime. Having access to network digital twins provides accurate sources of data during this critical phase, ensures that consumers have stable service for years to come, and mitigates additional costly capital expenditure reinvestments in that area.

“Telcos need a new, more accurate way to tackle their tower and microcell planning needs,” said Chris Penrose, global head of business development for telco at NVIDIA. “Our groundbreaking collaboration with HEAVY.AI, Bain and Maxar will enable planners to tackle challenging settings, like multi-tiered urban structures and heavily vegetated locations, as well as use information from other datasets to create the best possible network design.”

“We are privileged to collaborate with these fellow industry leaders and shape the future of telco planning,” said Darryn Lowe at Bain. “With these advanced analytics combined with our data-driven insights, telcos can discover new market growth opportunities, as well as avoid potentially expensive errors in business decisions.”

“Telcos have the monumental challenge of swiftly analyzing voluminous information to make superior business decisions. They now have access to instantaneous and precise data that guarantees exceptional coverage – leading to highly satisfied customers and increased profitability,” said Kondo.