Private 5G is becoming a key pillar of industrial digitalisation, and yet it still presents problems for global enterprises in terms of spectrum regulation, radio design, and ecosystem partners. Deployment blueprints are hard to come by, but not out of reach – reckon China Mobile, XCOM RAN, Moso Networks, and the GSA, which joined a panel at Industrial Wireless Forum to discuss a playbook to take private 5G from pilot sites to global fleets.
In sum – what to know:
Regulation – markets that have opened mid-band and shared access spectrum are driving global deployments outside China, which is closed and carrier-led); global scale depends on navigating local rules.
Frameworks – the supplier market is converging around repeatable architectures and turnkey platforms that let enterprises “design once, deploy everywhere”; but there is a bunch of bespoke design work besides.
Robots – physical AI, in the form of industrial vehicles and robots, is driving interest in dedicated edge-based compute capabilities, as well as dedicated private networks; AI will accelerate private 5G adoption.
Private 5G networks are no longer just a niche experiment in just a few high-tech sectors – they are rapidly becoming a global patchwork of infrastructure for new Industry 4.0 pyrotechnics in ports, factories, mines, and warehouses. A panel discussion with China Mobile, XCOM RAN (‘by Globalstar’), Moso Networks, and the Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) at Industrial Wireless Forum last week considered how enterprises and operators can navigate spectrum access, deployment models, and broader ecosystem challenges to scale private 5G networks effectively.
Spectrum availability remains the single most critical enabler for private 5G adoption. Speaking during the session, Joe Barrett, president at GSA, highlights the geographic trends around private 5G deployments. At the end of September, GSA calculated there were 1,800 private 5G (or 4G) deployments in total – only including fair-sized projects (over €50,000), only counted per enterprise, only covering standalone / hybrid deployments (no slicing), only considering geographies outside of China, and only based on members’ data (from Nokia and Ericsson, plus others).
Which is a long disclaimer, of sorts, acknowledging the GSA stats are not definitive; but as a tightly managed data set, they are valuable as a fair reflection of the rate of growth in the market, and also of the provenance of the growth. Barrett suggests most of the growth can be traced to “the countries that have made spectrum available for private mobile networks”. He says: “Europe is the big driver; around 36 percent of all the networks we are tracking are in Europe. North America [is] around 33 percent… and Asia Pacific [is] 16 percent.”
Spectrum gateway
Enterprises are adopting private 5G because they need their operational (OT) network infrastructure to deliver better performance, reliability, and security than they get from best-effort enterprise wireless systems or general-purpose public cellular networks. They want both total control and supreme flexibility, as well as proper service guarantees. The proof that private 5G is delivering on these demands is that enterprises are starting to deploy private 5G across multiple sites, says Barrett – to bring greater consistency as well as better performance.
“Some of those networks are across multiple sites, which makes it a lot easier for users to move between sites and maintain the same level of control, performance, and security,” he says. Deployment models, as an extension of the discussion, vary by region, of course, and are typically shaped by spectrum licensing policies. Mid-band spectrum has been the focus of regulatory efforts in certain markets to make spectrum available directly to enterprises. Barrett highlights a chunk of the so-called C-band at 3.3-3.8 GHz, which has been the sweet spot for regulatory efforts.
This incorporates the shared CBRS band in the US, of course, plus the seminal 3.7 GHz provision in Germany, and extends in the retelling to the 3.8-4.2 GHz band, as well, as boldly offered in the UK – which is the mooted model for Europe-wide standardisation. Barrett also notes interest in higher frequency bands, such as 26-28 GHz, and even legacy LTE bands. “Half of the networks that we are tracking are actually 4G LTE networks,” he says. Which will be the case until late in the decade, when 5G deployments tilt the balance.
Stephen Leotis, president and co-founder at CBRS specialist Moso Networks, highlights lessons from the ‘innovation band’ in the US. “CBRS has been a wild success,” he says. “There’s been tremendous growth in enterprise networks due to its adoption… It has been a catalyst for both private LTE and now private 5G [in] manufacturing, logistics, transport, education, and healthcare. Enterprises can… take advantage of these cellular capabilities without… costly licensing or deployment models… [which has] really democratized access to cellular connectivity.”
But private networks are hooked up to all kinds of spectrum, strategically and opportunistically. Globalstar-owned XCOM RAN, also on the panel (and also covered separately) uses its parent’s satellite licences in the S-band, including an 11.5 MHz chunk at 2.4 GHz, designated in 3GPP (for LTE/5G) as Band 53 (or n53 for 5G-NR). “The MSS spectrum has an ancillary terrestrial component… for terrestrial services,” says Murat Erkam, senior director of product management at XCOM RAN. “We [can] provide this to enterprises and [industries] for private 5G networks.”
It is worth considering that this is a mostly-western non-telco view. China Mobile International (CMI), also on the panel, argues that the carrier-led spectrum model works well – as per its record in its home country. (CMI’s account is covered in a write-up of another session.) Of course, one might point to other explanations for China’s success, too, and CMI’s whole import/export strategy – to help Chinese firms with private 5G abroad, and overseas firms with private 5G at home – relies in part on navigating fragmented global spectrum regulation and supply ecosystems.
Blueprints to scale
Which carries the discussion, well-managed at Industrial Wireless Forum by host Leo Gergs from ABI Research, neatly into one about how to scale private 5G deployments to new venues, applications, and geographies. Sam Bao, deputy head and director of technical services for CMI in the UK, explains his firm’s pitch to Chinese enterprises going into foreign markets. “We serve many Chinese clients in international markets. Many of them, especially those with manufacturing bases, or ports and mines, [want] private 5G networks, and we provide a turnkey solution.”
He says: “There are different regulatory environments, and so it depends where they are. But we work with local carriers, as well as with application vendors in all industries…. We have lots of [experience and partnerships] to meet the end goal – which is the application on the network, which enhances the enterprise’s efficiency, safety, security. The client wants to focus on their core business [rather than navigate the local ecosystem], and so they want a turnkey solution. And we can [provide that] because we’ve been doing it in China for many different industries.”
CMI’s turnkey solution is described as a unified private 5G service platform, which application vendors can plug into and enterprises can select and manage services from. “We create an overall solution for enterprises,” says Bao. Next to him, Erkam agrees. “Enterprises are focused on what they can do with the private network – [which is about] the application [on top]. But [the network] is the highway to connect everything,” he says, noting as well that a part of the discipline when commissioning new private 5G systems is to decide which workloads go where.
“It is not a one-size-fits-all situation,” he says, suggesting that enterprises are increasingly putting critical operational traffic onto private 5G, and routing standard administrative back-office IT functions over old Wi-Fi systems. ““In industrial settings, private 5G has emerged as a leading connectivity option for a lot of these businesses. Which doesn’t mean they won’t use Wi-Fi for other purposes.” But that decision, about private 5G for whatever ends, quickly cascades into questions about spectrum, architecture, ecosystems, applications – as per the Bao’s comments.
It is also about money, of course. Erkam says: “Once the spectrum is clarified, [enterprises] have to look at their finances and ROI analysis – about how much business [private 5G] will bring to them, how long it will take to break even, and how much growth [their initial investment] will support. So there is a lot to consider, and it is not an easy answer. But it is doable; many enterprises have done it many, many times – and if you do it the right way, then there is light at the end of the tunnel.” But rather like Bao’s ‘turnkey solution’, Leotis reckons there is an easy framework.
He emphasizes the importance of creating repeatable technical blueprints and deliberate operational procedures. “We are creating this idea that you can design or architect once, and then deploy everywhere… You can have a network architecture network stack – comprising the network core, the RAN, the SIM management, the security, even the IT/OT integration – and really build a blueprint… [so that] once you get it deployed, you [have] the ability to manage it everywhere… Providing that visibility throughout the lifecycle of the network is really important.”
He zooms out: it typically takes a couple of pilot sites, he says, to scope a custom problem and devise a bespoke solution, which is then mapped into the radio requirements and architectural cues from local spectrum provisions, and then checked and scaled nationally, or reworked and scaled internationally – and then managed consistently across multiple sites from a single operations centre, whether by internal or external teams. In the end, the discipline with such deployment blueprints is to standardise what you know, and allow flexibility for what you don’t know.
The solution, says Leotis, is a “standard network architecture” that flexes around spectrum provisions and radio design, and which can be wrapped up post-deployment in a simple management platform. The finer details are invariably worked with system integrator (SI) partners, he says. “We are creating the technical templates and operational procedures with our integration partners so they can take these pilot systems and really scale them across all their business locations. And once you get it deployed, you need the ability to manage it everywhere.”
The AI incentive
But complexities with spectrum and design won’t just vanish. Even as they become more familiar, new challenges will emerge – sometimes dictated by enterprise requirements, sometimes governed by regulatory or technical headwinds, mostly solved collaboratively. Bao says: “It’s a collective effort from the regulator, the operators, and from industry ecosystems.” Barrett at GSA raises the issue of spectrum again, and Bao chimes in about discussions around new wireless allocations at 6 GHz – which could go one way in China (5G) and another in the US (Wi-Fi).
Barrett also talks about reduced-capability 5G (5G RedCap) and non-terrestrial satellite network (NTN) comms; Bao talks about the availability and cost of industrial-grade 5G chipsets, modems, and devices. And then the discussion switches to AI, of course, and then draws to a close. But the AI discussing is worth hearing, again, just in relation to the opening dialogue about growth and scale. Erkam says: “AI is going to drive the implementation of private networks, especially where physical manifestation of AI becomes critical.” Meaning industrial robots, in other words.
He says: “That will require on-prem capabilities – inference at the edge, processing at the edge, applications at the edge… [It will require] dedicated connectivity [and] also compute,… [and enable] more private networks across different industries globally.”
Leotis says: “5G and AI is a really powerful combination for enterprises. AI needs reliable latency and security, which is what private 5G brings… Today we’re building these networks to solve more basic connectivity challenges – whether for mobility or industrial IoT… But as companies adopt private 5G, they’re going to find they have this digital foundation for the adoption of AI across their enterprise.
