Private network specialist Celona is ramping up its channel activity, including to certify devices on its private 4G/5G system. It has appointed US engineering solutions company Truminds Software Systems to its partner scheme, with the firm integrating its API platform with the Celona system, and setting up its own lab to certify IoT devices with Celona.
Truminds offers specialised engineering solutions for Industry 4.0 customers – notably in the manufacturing, petrochemicals, logistics, and mining sectors. It wants these to be pre-approved to connect on Celona’s private 4G/5G system, which includes the radio (RAN) and core network components, plus management platform. It is also integrating TruConnect platform, for managing application programming interfaces (APIs) to access 4G/5G features in private installations, to establish a “single pane-of-glass” system to manage networks and services.
Writing in a blog, Celona said it is in “final discussions with several other large worldwide partners to meet demand” for new devices as new use cases and applications are deployed on industrial 4G/5G networks. “Availability of end-user devices… is a critical success factor for the private wireless market,” it said. Celona noted the OnGo Alliance has been tracking devices authorised by the FCC in the US to operate in CBRS / Band 48 spectrum since 2018, and now lists over 1,000 devices on its website – about a third of which are 5G-enabled, it said.
Celona runs its own certification programme to test devices on its own system. During the first years after the scheme was established in 2023, the company ran the tests itself. But the private 4G/5G market in Industry 4.0 has picked up through 2024/25, it said, and is being spurred again by industrial interest in new network systems to support AI workloads (“growing exponentially through 2030”). It quotes research from SNS Telecom that 2025 “is the year that 5G will overtake 4G in the private wireless market”.
As such, Celona, like others, needs to scale its certification programme. In the blog, Mehmet Yavuz, co-founder and chief technology officer at Celona, said: “Our vision has always been to scale our device certification program globally, and to build a resilient programme that can ramp up to quickly certify the growing list of new end-user devices coming onto the market as new use cases and applications are being deployed. Today we announced one such partner – Truminds – and we are in final discussions with several other large worldwide partners to meet the demand.”
As part of the Celona partner programme (‘Frequency Partner Program’), Truminds is offering private 5G device testing against Celona’s private network solution. Amitabh Mathur, co-founder and interim chief executive at the firm, said: “We will be able to provide cutting-edge next generation AI and IoT automation solutions to our customers in this fast-growing IoT market and to further expand our reach. This partnership empowers industrial enterprises across sectors to accelerate their initiatives to unlock digitization and connected worker use cases.”
Rajeev Shah, co-founder and chief executive at Celona, commented: “The combination… means that industrial IoT customers can quickly deploy end-to-end Industry 4.0 solutions that just work.” The pair will show the device testing solution at MWC in Barcelona next week.
