Vodafone Spain has reached an agreement with the country’s leading drone operator, Hemav-Training, to develop new applications and use cases of drones connected to the operator’s 4G/LTE and 5G network in the city of Barcelona. The partners said the aim is to provide joint services to their respective clients in areas such as surveillance and security, rescue and fire detection, high-definition broadcasting of sporting and other live events, and medical services, as well as inspection and quality control of structures and agricultural areas.

Hemav-Training trains drone pilots throughout Spain and works internationally in more than 20 countries, above all in the agricultural, industrial and topographic sectors. Vodafone, meanwhile, has conducted a series of 5G drone-based use cases in recent years.

Tarifica’s Take

Connected drones (both 4G/LTE and 5G-enabled) are an aspect of IoT technology that are experiencing a great deal of popularity and therefore are attractive to mobile operators looking for IoT projects that can drive revenue and also help with brand enhancement. While many consumer drone users use the devices for entertainment purposes such as bird’s-eye photography, there are many business and industrial uses for drones. It is these that Vodafone Spain is targeting with this partnership.

While the network connectivity for drones can be provided by operators such as Vodafone, by leveraging a relationship with a technology partner to actually develop new applications for drones, an operator can realize the larger goal of developing a enterprise drone client base for the future and associating its brand with this particular sector of the IoT market. And since the applications range from surveillance and security (of interest to governments and military as well as enterprises) to inspection and quality control (desirable for enterprises and SMBs), the range of potential clients is also quite wide.