Providers Report Growing Demand for Private 5G Networks
Private 5G is in the nascent stage, but adoption is starting to accelerate, speakers said during a Fierce Wireless virtual conference Monday. Speakers said the network often has to be tailored for the individual business and has to go beyond a “turn-key” solution.
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“We’re starting to see this momentum being built,” said Rupesh Chokshi, AT&T vice president-product strategy and innovation. Chokshi said customers are coming to him with new business models involving private 5G networks, which he said is to be expected because 5G is so disruptive. “I’ve seen customers start to think about how are they going to do so many things differently,” he said. There are now 56 billion connected IoT devices, he said. “I’m starting to see connected cars … connected everything in healthcare, connected everything at the home,” he said. Video surveillance is “more and more differentiating and connected,” he said. An estimated 75% of industrial businesses are expected to move to 5G, he said.
Wireless connectivity is “ubiquitous,” Chokshi said: “It’s high-speed. It’s IoT driven. And we’re at the cusp of the decade for 5G and cellular networks.” Artificial intelligence is producing increasing amounts of data “and all that information has to be secure, it has to be stored, it has to be analyzed,” he said.
“We have certainly seen an uptick in the requests for private networks,” said Massimo Peselli, Verizon Business senior vice president-global enterprise. That was driven by growing use of the shared citizens broadband radio service (CBRS) and by the digital transformation, which “pushes enterprises to really consider more private networks” because of reliability concerns, he said.
Private networks aren’t right for all businesses, Peselli said. “It really depends on the customer requirements” and “the use cases,” he said. Some companies require lower latency or higher speeds and the network has to be designed specifically for the customer, he said. Private networks are similar “but there’s always a 10-20% customization,” he said. Verizon works with Ericsson, Nokia and other vendors, he said. “We always start from the use case -- what we need to deliver for the customer,” he said. Manufacturing, financial services and ports and other industrial hubs are making the most requests now for private networks, he said.
“You don’t want to have 5G just for the sake of having 5G,” said Andreas Mueller, Bosch chief expert-communication technologies for the IoT. “You have business problems and you solve those problems, you want to increase your efficiency, your output,” he said. One of challenges is “we’re still lacking devices, we’re still lacking the right features in 5G that really make a difference in most cases,” he said. “There’s not a single killer use case typically,” he said.
The market for 5G and private networks “is going to grow, and we are at kind of at a key beginning stages of that,” said 5G Americas President Chris Pearson. “It’s going to be a very large market, based on some of the research that we’ve seen,” he said. “Every business is going to have to determine how 5G is going to fit into their business strategy or overall strategy of their entire company,” he said. Companies need to think about what kind of spectrum is available to use, including CBRS, he said. Executives need to ask whether they can put together a network in-house or need to bring in a provider, he said. “There are a lot of elements that are critically important to the success of a private 5G enterprise network and those have to be managed and … understood,” he said.