IBM and Verizon today announced plans to create a testbed in Texas to develop and trial 5G applications for industrialized environments. 

Verizon deployed its 5G Ultra Wideband service and multi-access edge computing platform at IBM’s facility in Coppell, Texas, to experiment on robotics, guided vehicles, manufacturing process automation, visual quality inspection, and data analytics. Verizon’s 5G Edge service, which rides on Amazon Web Services’ Wavelength edge compute service, is now available in 13 of the nation’s top 20 largest markets. 

“The lab will provide hands-on experience for enterprises as they seek ways to leverage the new 5G capabilities — reduced latency, increased bandwidth, network slicing, and edge — by trialing new use cases and highly automated deployment and management approaches,” Steve Canepa, global GM and managing director at IBM’s communications sector, wrote in a blog post.

Customers will be invited to the lab to create business-specific applications that take advantage of the technologies and services available from the vendor and operator. Areas of initial focus include asset monitoring and optimization, field worker productivity and safety, and visual inspection. 

“Our approach is founded on the commitment to open hybrid cloud, industry standard interoperability and zero trust security that a 5G and edge future requires,” Canepa wrote. 

Applications developed in the lab can also be integrated with IBM’s hybrid telco network cloud, which runs on Red Hat OpenShift. IBM and Verizon announced plans to pair the vendor’s telco network cloud with Verizon’s service orchestration platform during MWC Barcelona earlier this summer. 

“It will bring agility, automation, and elasticity to Verizon’s core 5G network. That helps drive down costs, improve time to market, and improve service,” IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said during his keynote at the event. 

Verizon’s 5G standalone core is still under development. The operator previously said some traffic would hit that core before the end of 2020, followed by full commercialization in 2021, but it hasn’t shared any updates on that effort.

IBM last year hoisted IBM Cloud for Telecommunications, a new umbrella for its open, hybrid cloud technology targeting 5G network operators, and more than 40 partners have joined the platform to date, according to Krishna. 

IBM also recently announced the release of IBM Cloud for Network Automation, a suite of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for 5G and edge services. The offering, which runs on Red Hat OpenShift, can speed up service delays from days to minutes, Krishna said. “Operators can now use AI-powered automation to stand up and manage networks quickly, rapidly scale new services, and improve response times by up to six times.”