One size doesn’t fit all for enterprises who need private networks.
On-premise private networking works for some enterprises, and others are likely to see similar benefits from network slicing. The opportunities are expanding for synergy between enterprise, network operators and hyperscalers. A new class of system integration and platform management solutions are coming to market as businesses take control of their own telecom networks.
Private networks give enterprises better control and security than public networks. Enterprises architect and spec private networks to address mission-critical operations that can’t or shouldn’t be trusted to public providers.
Or for places where there is no public telecom infrastructure, such as British mining multinational EVRAZ’s efforts to deploy a 5G private network at its Sheregeshskaya mine in south-central Russia. Ericsson and MTS are developing the system for the mine. EVRAZ sees Sheregeshskaya as a pilot area for digital transformation as means to improve production, efficiency, and safety.
They’re not alone. Vodafone Germany and Porsche have created a private 5G network at Porsche’s development center in Weissach, Germany, which the company sees as foundational for new digital design, prototyping, and in-vehicle communication efforts. Enterprises, municipal governments, the United States Department of Defense and many others are finding use cases for private networks.
Enterprise private networks are still a formative market, accelerating on shifting global regulations and changing enterprise needs. The auction of 3.5 gigahertz (GHz) spectrum CBRS Priority Access Licenses (PALs) in 2020 helped kick it into high gear.
About 2,000 private networks operated globally in 2021, according to research from Analysys/Mason. But that’s expanding: The company also forecasts 20x growth in the number of operating private networks by 2026. Even then, though, the research concluded private network expenditures will remain a tiny sliver of the much bigger global telco economy.
Holding back many businesses is the right use case that forces them to rewrite the way they consume telecom and related services. Telecom goes from operating to capital expense on enterprise balance sheets. It also adds challenges to enterprise IT personnel and infrastructure management.
Making private networks work for IT
The CBRS auction yielded the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC’s) single largest spectrum auction by number of licenses, with 7 PALs available for each county in the United States. The auction opened up spectrum to enterprises for the first time. A scant few participated directly in the auction. But others are expected to come on board via licensing through the secondary market as enterprise uses and budgets for private network expands.
Making CBRS consumable for enterprise IT is top of mind for businesses like Celona, which sees vertical market integration opportunities with CBRS spectrum. Its customers include enterprises with specific Quality of Service (QoS) needs. Verticals for CBRS spectrum includes healthcare, logistics, and manufacturing. The company’s biggest market segment is higher education, helping already-strained campus IT to deploy private network solutions.
And at a time when information security is top of mind for every CIO, Celona VP of Marketing Ozer Dondurmacioglu told RCR secure LTE keeps sensitive business information secure.
“Enterprises spent a lot of time and money purchasing, deploying, supporting, managing, training their staff…and they want to run that stuff on relatively predictable, clean spectrum, which CBRS LTE promises them,” he said.
Private 5G also gives hyperscalers a chance to compete in the telco space. Amazon announced AWS Private 5G in November. The service streamlines enterprise 4G and 5G private network deployment as a soup-to-nuts scalable private network service offering.
AWS sends enterprises on-prem small-cell radio base stations and servers managed using AWS tools. It’s a low-friction approach attractive to AWS-friendly enterprises. AWS is controlling the rollout as it get the new service off the ground. It’s only in limited release and only in the U.S.
5G network slicing for enterprise
Right alongside private LTE and 5G networks, 5G network slicing will be a critical driver of enterprise 5G adoption. 5G network slicing offers an alternative to turnkey small-cell 5g private networks. At least for enterprises that don’t require on-premise hardware. A cloud-native 5G Standalone (SA) core network sporting network slicing services can provide the same key benefits as a private network, with less capital expense and organizational disruption.
5G network slicing enables network operators to create logical, virtualized, and private networks on using their common 5G infrastructure. Each network can be uniquely customized based on the enterprise customer’s specific service requirements. Each can be optimized for massive bandwidth, low latency, and greater device density. Enterprises can have different slices, depending on service needs.
Network slicing isn’t unique to 5G. But network slicing has emerged as one of the “killer apps” driving enterprises and others to 5G adoption. Or at very least, one of the most-hyped 5G services.
Dish Chief Network Officer Marc Rouanne mused on the future of his company’s greenfield 5G SA network as a “network of networks” suitable to infinite enterprise use cases.
Rouanne predicts businesses using Dish’s 5G enterprise services will be able to customize many network slices. Each one tailored to different business requirements, some optimized for latency or reliability, some optimized for low cost.
Ericsson bluntly lays it out for CSPs. “Network slicing is the operators’ best answer on how to build and manage a network that meets and exceeds the emerging requirements from a wide range of users.”
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