Turkcell has used its private 5G network to estimate crowd density from changes in radio signals, with no cameras involved. The operator ran the Integrated Sensing and Communication work with Tiami Networks and reports 90 percent accuracy for density estimation during a first phase at the Istanbul Fair Center.
Validation went beyond a controlled venue. At Turkcell Küçükyalı Plaza, engineers measured the density of people at the building entrance and ran a security scenario that raised an alarm when human movement was detected.
Sensing on isolated C-band private networks
The first-phase tests ran over Turkcell’s Mobile Private Network, launched this year and operating isolated from the public grid, with radio provisioned specifically for the institution.
Sensing shared the C-band carrier that Türkiye’s 5G deployments use, and Turkcell describes this as the first time ISAC scenarios have been tested on commercial 5G infrastructure in the country. Tiami Networks’ PolyEdge analyses variation in the signals already carrying traffic, inferring whether a space is filling up or emptying.
For an industrial network team, that’s a different procurement shape to a camera rollout. One supplier holds the spectrum, the private core, and the analytics model, which simplifies the contract and keeps the inference inside the operator’s own environment.
Density estimation and intrusion alarms
Tested scenarios covered human and density detection and human-induced intrusion detection for facility security.
Person location landed within roughly three metres, which is enough to place someone at an entrance zone or along a corridor. Asset-level or rack-level tracking wasn’t among the scenarios Turkcell ran, and precise industrial positioning is a different problem from counting people.
The absence of image capture is both an advantage and disadvantage, depending on your perspective and needs. Turkcell frames it as a privacy advantage over video surveillance for indoor location tracking and crowded-area management, and the second phase showed the technique holding up under real operating conditions, not only in a test environment.
IMT-2030 framing and operator packaging
ISAC appears in the ITU’s IMT-2030 framework as a capability future networks are expected to carry. Turkcell is testing well before that standardisation work concludes, which is where the packaging question bites. Revenue in the meantime has to come from the private-network contract, where sensing rides alongside connectivity the enterprise has already bought rather than standing as a separate line item.
Prof. Dr. Vehbi Çağrı Güngör, Turkcell Deputy General Manager for Network Technologies, said: “The networks of the future won’t only be infrastructures that provide high-speed and uninterrupted communication, but will also transform into intelligent systems that can sense their environment.”
Integration detail is what enterprise buyers would want next. Whether an intrusion alarm lands in a building management system, a security operations console, or a facilities dashboard changes the deployment effort considerably, and Turkcell hasn’t said how that wiring works. The same goes for accuracy under shifting occupancy, which is the variable that decides whether sensing supplements existing security infrastructure or replaces part of it.
Turkcell says the capability is expected to open application scenarios in smart cities, autonomous systems, and security.
See also: Singtel and Ericsson target industrial 5G with five-year partnership
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