Celona chief Rajeev Shah tells RCR that its new converged two-fer private 5G/Wi-Fi solution, propped up on agentic AI, properly opens the door for physical AI in Industry 4.0 – believe the AI hype, he says, as enterprises come knocking.
In sum – what to know:
New adversaries – Celona will butt heads with legacy Wi-Fi vendors, says Shah, but they don’t have what it does: two technologies for the price of one, controlled on the same terms in the same platform.
Robotics hype – Celona has seen the order books and workloads, and says demand from industrial enterprises for physical AI is driving “phenomenal” interest in performant private 5G and Wi-Fi 7 networking.
One fell swoop – Celona says it is attempting, in one go, to fix all the problems that have dogged the private 5G sector: the versus/with Wi-Fi calculation, radio complexity, and a lack of devices/machines.
So we hinted, earlier this week, at something more than the press release – which somehow positioned US private 5G outfit Celona, always an agitator against bigger vendor brands, like it was suddenly going head-to-head with the likes of Cisco, HPE, and Siemens in the enterprise Wi-Fi market. This is not quite true, and not the way Celona sees it; but it is also not entirely wrong either. Its newly-branded and newly-equipped hybrid campus 5G/Wi-Fi solution – which bundles a line of Celona-made Wi-Fi access points, and runs on top of an agentic network-ops platform – sets it up to take business from them too, ostensibly, plus from the likes of Ericsson and Nokia (if the latter is even in the ‘campus’ game anymore). The difference, we said, is its new Wi-Fi rivals are entrenched, already – whereas its old adversaries in the private 5G sector, as established as they are, are still on a charm offensive with enterprises.
All perfectly true. But, continuing the conversation-proper with chief executive Rajeev Shah, Celona says its proposition is different. “This is the most effective way for customers to get value out of a converged network,” he says. The firm prototyped an integrated private 5G/Wi-Fi radio unit, he explains, but couldn’t get it to work. “We gave up because the propagation is so different. It just didn’t make sense to have them in the same enclosure. So our existing 5G radios are now augmented with new Wi-Fi 7 radios, with convergence at every other layer.” But the value remains, he suggests: “Existing private 5G subscriptions – which include a 5G radio, full software stack, and support – now come with Wi-Fi 7 access points included – at no additional cost. The customer can choose to cover the same area, or cover a different part of the premise with Wi-Fi 7. They can use it as they want.”
He goes on: “On the technical side, it is truly converged – which means the same functionality for quality-of-service, security policies, and so on. Everything works seamlessly across both. Devices maintain sessions across both, one to the other. On the operations side, it is integrated into Celona Orchestrator – so you get a full view of configuration provisioning [and] lifecycle management on both networks. So it’s one network with two radio technologies working together, included in the subscription.” Just quickly, to close the news-loop: Orchestrator, its cloud net-ops platform, has been populated with AI agents, as a new platform, available separately (for now), called Orchestrator AI. The old 5G headaches, which have so afflicted enterprise IT teams, are removed, the story goes, to be handled by software agents – or severely reduced otherwise, and combined with management of any Wi-Fi campus additions.
Agentic operations
Orchestrator AI will “coexist” with the old platform for a while, he says – “because it is such a new way to operate the network.” The system “packages” a set of agentic tools, presented as “skills”, into an enterprise’s preferred LLM (“Claude or ChatGPT, or whatever”) to work with a custom AI model in the platform, Celona Brain, which codifies its in-house engineering knowhow to “configure, provision, diagnose, and fix” the networks for enterprise workloads. These agents/skills also “collaborate with other agents across the… enterprise”. The firm has something else, a little vague (listening back), called an “agent playground”, which may or may not refer to the reach across the agentic enterprise, that goes to “define workflows between humans and agents”. Shah says: “The IT teams of the future, already so lean, will be asked to do so much more. We are supercharging them to run these networks very simply.”
Besides, Celona is to release open-source software (AerConnect), also agent-based, to IoT makers to embed 5G and Wi-Fi into robotics modules. Digi International and Telit Cinterion will be the first with the new kits. Celona Orion will be available from the fourth quarter of 2026, apparently – with “key capabilities introduced on a phased basis”. All of which was covered before; and per the news write-up, the convergence play also includes provisioning and management of satellite backhaul on Starlink, and public 5G connectivity on any number of carriers (via MOCN support in the platform, which props up its neutral-host offer). We should pause on Starlink, if only because (its owner has ensured) everyone is talking about it. As RCR wrote in a jumbled news-review piece on Wednesday (Smells like team spirit) Shah says the Starlink proposition is good as a backhaul link for private 5G at remote sites.
He says: “We are seeing it in mines, and new construction sites – especially with this data-center boom. We are seeing it in remote oil-and-gas, in ships and shipping terminals. We’ve been surprised [at the backhaul capacity]. We are running remote oil and gas rigs with full voice and video comms over it, and it’s operated without glitches. I mean, I now look at whether the plane has Starlink before booking the flight.” Just the tonic for the richest man on the planet, as RCR wrote before. But wait, what about this sabre rattling talk, about Celona doing battle in factories and warehouses with Cisco, Ericsson, HPE, Nokia, Siemens – and everyone else with a dog in the fight? Shah is not really having it. The value is better, anyway – a two-fer if the enterprise is buying private 5G, which it has to be – and it is only geared for certain industrial sectors, and really only if they are extending or replacing their Wi-Fi systems.
So a skirmish, on the fringes, perhaps. Shah responds: “The expanded offer addresses a couple of scenarios. One: the customer is doing a Wi-Fi refresh, which happens every three to four years. Today, we’d ask them to do it with their traditional Wi-Fi vendor, and buy private 5G separately from us – two networks, to be bought and operated differently. With this, for almost the same budget as their Wi-Fi 7 refresh, they get both the technologies, and a converged network. Two, which is a variation: they’re building a brand new site; and then, it makes even more sense to buy a converged network. Because pure private-5G means all your devices have to support 5G, which is not always practical, and also too costly and disruptive if it is with a traditional [Nokia/Ericsson] telco-style architecture; and Wi-Fi-only in this world doesn’t make sense because Wi-Fi has inherent limitations.”
Industrial skirmishes
Right, but you’re still pitching into Cisco’s heartlands? You’re up against Siemens, also, which has both irons in the fire. HPE has Athonet (still, I think). Shah plays a straight bat. “We think about it less in terms of competitors,” he says, “and more in terms of the customer base we serve – which is industrial and semi-industrial, where there is a clear need for wireless network modernization that covers both worlds. We think the platform is very unique, offering a way to leverage both these radio technologies with an architecture that fits what you have at a cost that makes most sense… The right thing for the customer is not to make false choices, and instead to get the best of both worlds within budget.” Just quickly: “semi-industrial” – does that mean healthcare, too? Because Celona has had success in hospitals, plus university campuses in the US, often with its neutral-host offer as a starter kit.
“Our target verticals are manufacturing, logistics, transportation – which includes everything from rail to airports to ports – petrochemicals, oil and gas, mining, construction, and healthcare. The term we use, internally, is ‘uncarpeted enterprises, both indoors and outdoors.” What about brand trust – which is a challenge for a start-up in any sector, and something Celona has fought to establish versus well-heeled familiars in the private 5G game? Is that going to be a challenge, again? Or has Celona got the track record in Industry 4.0 to make light work of it? Shah responds: “We have served some of the largest names in the industrial market for four years. That gives confidence and credibility to go to the broader market to say, ‘look, we’re already running some of the most critical workloads, and, expanding to a new radio technology, even one as mature as Wi-Fi – this platform is proven to work.”
He adds: “I fully expect that this will put us in more direct competition with the traditional Wi-Fi players. We have been on the outskirts until now, just because of some budget redirection towards private 5G. But we are now, very squarely, in these industrial and semi-industrial sites, and competing for the same budget. So it will happen. But the difference is that we have, from day one, focused on these markets, and their OT needs. Whereas most Wi-Fi is built for regular office users. So we have a unique value prop, which works very well for the business case. We have specialist channel partners. But it does not mean we are going to compete for Wi-Fi-only business in office spaces anytime soon. That is not the intent.” Rather, the intent is to expand the tech, and use agentic AI as possible, to capture physical AI, which is driving network modernization at pace in Industry 4.0 – the story goes.
Although Shah spins it the other way, too – that customers are crying out for converged systems. He says: “There has been such a transition to robotics, and what gets generally-termed as physical AI, that it was obvious the right solution was a converged network. I mean, we just kept hearing about that as a requirement – over and over and over again. So it made sense for us to build this ASAP; we had been thinking about it for a while. But we have had so much momentum with private 5G in the last 12 months, in terms of new customers, new deployments, new workloads – beyond the connected-worker case, which was the main one until last year. And we think it will lead to massive expansion of our addressable market. But it means our customers will be able to deploy with less friction – not worrying about buying and operating two networks. That is the big reason.”
Robot requirements
As a note: the US division of Italian tile manufacturer Del Conca (Del Conca USA) has been named as an early trialist of the converged system, whether for ‘robotics’ or connected workers; US-based firm system integrator Industrial Network Systems (INS) has been named a channel partner; there are no other public references, as yet – in the factory or in the channel. But hang on; last time we spoke, or when we spoke a year ago, Celona was laying off staff because private 5G sales had underwhelmed. “Yes. But the last 12 months have been great. We have got back to the really high growth we had for the three years preceding that rough patch last year. We are seeing business more than double, actually close to tripling, year over year – across all our KPIs. Growth has been phenomenal. We see concrete deployment plans over the next 12-24 months, and they all say it will accelerate.”
He adds: “I can’t overemphasize enough: there has been lots of hype around robotics, and it seems to be real. Every customer has real robotics workloads on these networks now.” What does that mean, really – “robotics” workloads? Does it mean AGVs and AMRs, or does it mean something else? “Yes, indoors, it means a lot of AMRs. There are certainly AGVs too, but we are seeing a transition from first-gen AGVs to more modern AMRs with GPUs and AI models. They are lots-more general-purpose, and less constrained in terms of what they can do, and places they go within a site – all of which drives this need for very reliable wireless. We are seeing a lot of AMR deployments outdoors, too – autonomous vehicles of various types, whether automated haulage systems in mines or autonomous trucks in yards. We are seeing early POCs of humanoids, but that’s further out. They’re not production-grade today.”
If we zoom out, the sense is that Celona is seeking, in one fell swoop, to fix all the age-old problems the private 5G market has faced: Wi-Fi versus/with private 5G, and how to bankroll a new technology (Orion); inherent cellular radio complexity for enterprise IT teams (Orchestrator); and a fundamental lack of compatible devices (AerConnect). Is that right? Shah responds: “That’s correct. And for us, the transition to robotics and physical AI makes all of these go from what used to be a nuisance to really blocking business-critical initiatives. And so the timing is very important because we are at an inflection point when we think this is critical. This is no longer a nice-to-have.” And he drops his guard, and pitches in some fighting-talk at the end. “Candidly, we don’t see anyone else with a converged network. Others have different components; none have the whole system.”
He adds: “But it is a natural evolution. Anyone focused on the same industrial base should be doing the same thing. It will be the norm going forward.”
