Note, this is a transcript of the introductory address at Private Networks Forum (May 23), to tee-up the show and capture the state of the market; the full event is available on-demand now.
This is the fourth version of Private Networks Forum (May 23; available on demand), in either its global or European format. Which begs the question: what has changed with private networks over the last couple of years? What tangible progress has been made since spectrum was liberated for private enterprise usage in leading markets, and the supply chain started to limber up? And the answer, on the face of it, is: not a whole lot.
The same issues with availability of devices, spectrum, and features still generally apply; the same tangles with use cases, business cases, and scalability remain mostly unresolved. The supply side and demand side are still struggling, to an extent, to speak the same language; certainly the challenge to identify clear use-case driven returns is a sticking point, in all but-a-few scenarios – particularly indoors, and particularly in factories.
The Bundes Netz Aguntur (BNetzA), the German regulator, told RCR Live last month that it has issued 300-odd local 5G licences (for enterprises, not networks) in the 3.7-3.8 GHz band. UK regulator Ofcom said it has issued less than 900 (per-network, not per-enterprise) at 3.8-4.2 GHz. But most are trials and proofs, just to kick the tires; big Industry 4.0 heavyweights in these markets are waiting on an industrial version of 5G, which is not available yet.
To put those numbers in perspective, the Global mobile Supplies Association (GSA) has the global total for enterprises (!) with (at least one) serious-sized publicly-referenced private network at around 1,000 (plus), as of December. Which is not that much, even just for enterprise-licence numbers, when you consider the count includes more-dominant LTE deployments, and the telecoms industry is betting on more private 5G radios than public 5G radios – in tens of millions of different venues. So again: very clearly, this is early-days, and nothing is guaranteed.
There is frustration, too, that the market is not moving faster – to the point there is a blame-game, of sorts; that there aren’t enough devices, because there aren’t enough chipsets. But what did we expect? Somebody said, when asked off-hand about the timeline for ‘lights-out manufacturing’, that it will be “a decade; more than a decade, at least”. So yeah, what did we expect? This stuff takes time; and maybe, actually, progress is pretty okay.
The supply-chain blame-game is wrong, actually, and rather embarrassing. The pace of the market is not dictated by the supply of chips; there aren’t enough chips because there isn’t enough demand. The chips will come when the demand comes. And the demand is not there because the technology is not there – at least for the big industrial engine room at the heart of this broader economic transformation. The German numbers tell us that.
5G is a developing standard, and most of its big industrial promise comes in later versions – starting with Release 16 at the end of 2023, or start of 2024, when the very first industrial-grade 5G devices drip-feed into the market. So if the pace is slower than expected, and if it is anyone’s fault, then it is the fault of the telecoms industry – for saying one thing and delivering another – at least until this time next year, perhaps, when chipmakers heads’ might be turned.
Until then, 5G is a glass house, and we know what they say about people living in them.
But this is not the whole truth, clearly. It focuses too much on the Industry 4.0 setting, and private broadband-5G is finding a home in all kinds of sectors. The most surprising thing about it, someone said, is the variety of interest – in ports and warehouses, and cities and venues, and all kinds of big wide-area spaces where its application might be better defined as IoT for industry, rather than industrial IoT. There is a distinction, as someone else said.
And it makes mobile operators, sometimes written-off in hard-nosed Industry 4.0, immediately necessary and relevant because of the need to cross to public 5G to support mobility and tracking cases, most notably. It is important, too, because this faster-flowing IoT-for-industry story is a definitive staging-post for most enterprise cases – and a key pitstop, also, on the road to 5G-geared industrial IoT and more complex Industry 4.0 destinations.
Indeed, Release 15 chips are finding their way into industrial tools, like torque machines (screwdrivers and wrenches, and so on), plus better-defined services like automated guided vehicles (AGVs) for ferrying goods and augmented reality (AR) applications for remote assistance. It is not like 5G is being used to network business-critical CNC machines, which are running the whole production floor. But you have to start somewhere, and it has started.
The other difference to a couple of years ago is the experience and perspective. No one seriously talks about 5G replacing Wi-Fi, completely wholesale, anymore – except maybe, but probably not, in greenfield sites. No one talks like 5G is the whole solution; they don’t really talk about it as more than just a tool in the box. Everyone knows digital change is hard, and there is work to do; but team-5G is pragmatic and keen to collaborate, as part of a collective.
Another thing, more generally, is that the bigger Industry 4.0 narrative is starting to accelerate. Someone else said, in an aside at Hannover Messe, that Tesla used to be the model for all this stuff – for connecting, and processing, and using data – but that there is a Tesla in every industry now; and, more than that, that there are multiple Teslas in every industry. So that is where industry is, as private 5G pitches-up. Which is fantastic news for suppliers in the mix.
Just to add, finally: Private Networks Forum – quite small and very focused (and happy to be so) – comes after two really big events in the industry calendar, in the hulking forms of MWC and Hannover Messe. And, as we have said, the truth about private 5G is probably somewhere between the over-excitement of the first and the under-statement of the second. And hopefully this event strikes a balance between, to give a real picture of private 5G.
