Verizon completes private 5G at five Thames Freeport sites

Verizon Business has completed a private 5G deployment at Thames Freeport in the UK, covering five separate tenant sites 18 months after winning the contract with Nokia supplying the equipment.

Each tenant runs an independent network core, so data stays within that tenant's network. Verizon Business named DP World London Gateway and DP World Logistics Park, the Port of Tilbury across two locations, and Ford Dagenham.

For an allocator, the useful detail is the offtake: five tenants across port logistics, warehousing and vehicle manufacturing, rather than one anchor. Thames Freeport describes the deployment as built-in estate infrastructure for physical AI, computer vision, real-time asset tracking, connected-worker safety, predictive maintenance and edge computing.

Nokia supplied its Enterprise Campus Edge offering, including the Nokia Digital Automation Cloud platform and Nokia MX Industrial Edge. Robb Juliano, vice president of 5G acceleration at Verizon Business, called the freeport "a perfect reference point for the versatility and scalability of private 5G across complex industrial sites," adding: "One commercial hub, five individual sites with unique needs, and a multitude of connected use cases."

Data Center Dynamics reports that since 2021 Thames Freeport has helped create more than 1,400 jobs and secured more than £2.13 billion ($2.84 billion) of private investment. A further 1,290 people are employed across the freeport's tax sites, with 2,548 additional jobs in the confirmed pipeline.