Newmont entrusts autonomous mining to private 5G
Coverage, predictable performance of Ericsson Private 5G support autonomous devices for safety, efficiency
Success story highlights
Challenge
At Newmont's Boddington gold mine in Western Australia, the expansion of autonomous haul rucks and drill rigs exposed the limitations of Wi-Fi connectivity. The mine's constantly changing terrain required teams to repeatedly move Wi-Fi trailers to maintain coverage, creating disruption and making it difficult to relaibly support autonomous operations at scale. Newmont needed a more dependable connectivity foundation.
Solution
Newmont deployed Ericsson Private 5G to provide reliable, low-latency connectivity across its mining operation. The network enables continuous communication between autonomous equipment, sensors, cameras, and centralized control systems. By replacing Wi-Fi with a purpose-built private cellular network, Newmont established the performance and coverage needed to support large-scale automation across a dynamic mining environment.
Benefits
With private 5G, Newmont has established reliable, low-latency connectivity across its vast site – supporting autonomous fleets, improving worker safety, and enabling a long-term roadmap for digital innovation. As the mining industry continue to modernize, Boddington stands as a clear example of how private 5G can move automation from possibility to reality.
Background and challenges
As Newmont’s Boddington mine in Australia expanded its use of autonomous trucks and drills, connectivity became a critical bottleneck. The mine operates across a dynamic landscape where terrain, elevation, and active work zones change daily.
Traditional Wi-Fi infrastructure struggled to keep pace, as it experienced coverage gaps and failed to deliver consistent performance for mobile assets. The team was having to consistently move Wi-Fi trailers around between various spots where autonomous tech was being operated. This constant disruption was hindering day-to-day mining operations.
At the same time, the scale of operations demanded nearly zero tolerance for disruption. Autonomous machines generating large volumes of real-time data could not afford intermittent connectivity.
For Newmont, the challenge became clear: Newmont couldn’t roll out automated machines at a large scale without a fundamentally more reliable network.
“The first two years of autonomy here were difficult due to Wi-Fi — especially handover and problems with low latency and saturation.”
Matt Philbey, Mining and Process Applications Lead, Newmont Boddington
Solution
To overcome these limitations, Newmont deployed Ericsson Private 5G, which is a full-stack private network solution designed for challenging industrial environments. Private 5G addresses Newmont’s connectivity needs in challenging mining environments by creating a stable foundation for autonomous mining operations — enabling continuous communication between machines, sensors, and centralized control systems.
Outcomes
Key automation enabled by consistently low latency and high throughput
At Newmont, moving from Wi-Fi to private 5G has provided the throughput and performance consistency that were necessary to sucessfully support widespread automation of vehicles and drills. With reliable remote and autonomous operations now in place, workers have increasingly been able to move out of high-risk areas and into centralized control environments. Tasks that once required physical presence in the pit are now managed remotely.
“Wi-Fi was limiting what we could embrace in terms of technology and the next stages of automation. 5G is enabling us to remove some of those limitations. We’re back to the vision of where we want to be and what the steps are to get there.”
Chris Dark, General Manager, Newmont Boddington
Sitewide coverage across challenging mining environment
Gone are the Wi-Fi trailers and downtime issues. Instead, Newmont has Ericsson Private 5G, with an on-premises network core and four strategically placed towers covering a mining site that is 4 kilometers long and 1 kilometer wide.
With a predictable, high-performance network in place, now Newmont can operate fleets of autonomous haul trucks and drill rigs without interruption.
“Having private 5G towers at the edge of the pit areas, outside the operational zones, makes it much easier for us to maintain the connectivity and uptime we need,” said Daniel Evans, team lead for EUC Services at Newmont Boddington.
Scalable platform for ongoing innovation
At Boddington, the private 5G network already is supporting:
- Autonomous haul trucks and drill rigs
- Video cameras with computer vision and AI integration
- Handheld devices for connected workers
- Remote monitoring for staff safety
- Sensors on machinery for predictive maintenance
Looking ahead, the ability to connect anything and everything at scale positions Newmont to continue evolving its operations over time.
“5G's really solved it for us, to give us the high bandwidth and low latency kind of connectivity we need for mining now and into the future.”
Matt Philbey, Mining and Process Applications Lead, Newmont Boddington
