Nokia struck a three-year agreement with Telefonica to collaborate on the development of the private network market in Spain, a deal that comes a few weeks after the duo partnered on standalone (SA) 5G services.

The Finnish vendor stated it would work with Telefonica’s Spain mobile unit and IoT and Big Tech divisions to deploy 100 Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (DAC), Modular Private Wireless (MPW) and MX Industrial Edge (MXIE) solutions and industrial devices.

The partnership will target “key mission-critical industries”, such as ports, manufacturing and logistics designed to improve productivity, worker safety and sustainability in the Spanish enterprise market.

Longer-term, Nokia and Telefonica explained the collaboration represented a significant step to boost Industry 4.0, allowing industries to become data-driven, enhance the operator’s network capabilities and offer a clear path “to migrating use cases to 5G”.

Nokia revealed it has now deployed a mission-critical network to more than 2,600 enterprise customers in the transport, energy, large enterprise, manufacturing, webscale and public sector segments worldwide, representing more than 730 private wireless customers worldwide.

Adrian Nevado, business director at Telefonica Spain said the collaboration aligns with its vision to empower the industry “with cutting-edge technology in a new era where artificial intelligence and the use of data can lead the way forward”.

Nokia and Telefonica have stepped up their partnership in recent weeks. In late June the companies teamed to focus on producing SA 5G-compatible services spanning the consumer, enterprise and industrial sectors in Spain and Germany, adding to a recent run of telecoms related API moves.