Smart Mountain 5G Brings Private 5G to the French Alps

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Private 5G is most commonly associated with factories, warehouses, ports and other clearly bounded enterprise sites. Smart Mountain 5G in the French Alps is quite different. It is exploring whether a private mobile network can become shared digital infrastructure for an entire mountain territory, supporting energy, agriculture, tourism and public safety across locations that are difficult and expensive to connect using conventional infrastructure.

The SmartMountain5G project is being deployed in the Haute Maurienne valley, close to the French-Italian border. Rather than covering a factory campus of a few square kilometres, the project targets more than 150 km² of mountainous terrain, with radio sites located at elevations between roughly 1,200 and 2,300 metres. The original design envisaged twelve 5G radio sites distributed through the valley.

Numerisat is coordinating the project, while Firecell supplies the private 5G technology, including the network platform, servers and radio equipment. Other core consortium members include CleverValues, Hydrostadium and Université Savoie Mont Blanc, alongside local authorities and other organisations involved in individual use cases. The official European Commission figures put the project cost at approximately €2.298 million, of which around €1.723 million comes from the Connecting Europe Facility Digital programme.

What makes the architecture particularly interesting is the combination of terrestrial private 5G with satellite backhaul. Running fibre to every remote site in this environment would be difficult and expensive, so the 5G radio sites can instead be connected back towards the network using GEO and LEO satellite connectivity. Firecell says its deployment uses Pegasus radios operating in band n77, with different radio power levels suited to the individual locations. A central 5G core supervises the network, with satellite links providing connectivity towards the distributed RAN sites.

There is an important terminology distinction here. Although the project has sometimes been described as combining 5G and NTN, the available architecture descriptions indicate that satellites are being used primarily for backhaul behind terrestrial 5G base stations. It therefore should not be confused with 3GPP 5G NR NTN, where the satellite itself forms part of the NR radio access link to the user equipment.

The project is also interesting because it is not simply about providing broadband coverage. The original programme identified four broad application areas: energy, agriculture, tourism and infrastructure, and safety and environmental monitoring. Potential applications range from supervision of electricity production and remote infrastructure to water management, livestock monitoring, connectivity for mountain refuges, environmental sensing and support for rescue operations.

Some of these ideas are now progressing into practical trials. Université Savoie Mont Blanc is working with MND on mountain safety applications, including avalanche risk and preventive avalanche control. Researchers are examining the use of sensors, high-definition cameras and seismic data over the private 5G network. Hydrostadium is involved in applications related to hydroelectric power production, while agricultural applications are also being explored with local stakeholders.

This highlights another interesting characteristic of Smart Mountain 5G. It is effectively a multi-user private network rather than an enterprise installing connectivity solely for its own employees and machines. Université Savoie Mont Blanc says the architecture could ultimately accommodate several dozen different organisations on the same infrastructure. That makes the project closer to a local digital utility or neutral-host private network than the conventional single-enterprise P5G model.

The project was formally inaugurated in Bessans in November 2025. At that stage deployment was still continuing, and in January 2026 the university reported that the network was approximately 80% operational. By June 2026, Numerisat described Smart Mountain 5G as having entered its operational phase, with antennas deployed and initial applications under way across safety, tourism, agriculture and energy. The project also received a bronze medal at the 2026 Forum des Interconnectés in the "Territoire Innovant et Responsable" category, recognising the participation of Val-Cenis, Bessans and Aussois.

A further step came in July 2026 when ELIAN deployed edge computing capabilities at two levels of the system: alongside the 5G core at Numerisat's Le Bourget-du-Lac site and directly at the Aussois pilot site. Bringing processing closer to the radio network allows applications such as real-time video analytics, camera-based event detection, sensor processing, digital twins and distributed AI to operate without continually sending data to a distant cloud platform.

This is particularly relevant for mountain safety and critical infrastructure. If a camera or sensor detects an incident, processing information locally can reduce dependence on an external connection and allow decisions or alerts to be generated closer to where the event is happening. The combination of private 5G, satellite backhaul and distributed edge computing therefore becomes more important than any one of those technologies individually.

For Firecell, Smart Mountain 5G is also a valuable real-world reference. Private network vendors frequently demonstrate their technology inside factories and laboratories. Operating distributed private 5G infrastructure across high-altitude sites, connected partly through satellite links and supporting organisations with very different requirements, presents a different set of challenges. Firecell's role includes supplying the 5G platform and radio infrastructure, while Numerisat brings its satellite and telecoms expertise and coordinates the wider deployment.

Firecell itself has also changed significantly since the Alpine deployment began. In February 2026, Firecell and Belgian Open RAN specialist Accelleran announced their merger, bringing Firecell's core network and network management capabilities together with Accelleran's programmable RAN, RAN Intelligent Controller and xApp/rApp capabilities. The combined company continues under the Firecell name and describes its resulting platform as a European-developed, hardware-agnostic private 5G solution.

It is worth keeping these developments separate: Smart Mountain 5G began using Firecell technology before the Accelleran merger, so the Alpine deployment should not automatically be described as a deployment of today's complete merged Firecell/Accelleran stack. Nevertheless, it provides Firecell with an unusual reference deployment as the company expands its focus on industrial, critical infrastructure and other demanding private network environments.

Perhaps the most significant indication of the project's longer-term importance is that the concept is already being considered beyond Haute Maurienne. In 2026, Meije Development listed Smart Mountain 5G Romanche, which aims to replicate the Haute Maurienne approach in the upper and middle Romanche valley, again involving partners including Numerisat, Firecell, CleverValues, Hydrostadium and Université Savoie Mont Blanc.

Smart Mountain 5G is therefore becoming more than an interesting private 5G deployment in an unusual location. It is testing a model in which private cellular, satellite connectivity, edge computing, IoT and AI can be assembled into shared infrastructure for remote communities and critical services.

If the model proves technically and economically sustainable, the bigger opportunity may not be limited to ski resorts or the Alps. Similar architectures could potentially be applied to remote energy sites, agricultural regions, mines, islands and other areas where conventional terrestrial connectivity is difficult to deploy but where reliable local communications are increasingly important.

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