People must have noticed the capabilities of private 5G networks are vastly spread all over the globe.
According to the Global mobile Suppliers Association, 5G stays on track to get the fame of the fastest adopted mobile technology ever.
However, there is a vast global variation in terms of customers’ sentiment towards 5G in terms of both willingness to pay more and intent to upgrade for it.
Actually, only a 3rd of customers comply with the potential of 5G to deliver innovative and new series with a majority of people to expect faster mobile data connections.
On the other hand, the effect of 5G on the business world is expected to be more significant and immediate. According to the report of GSMA Intelligence, 5G is requisite to be the first generational mobile technology to have a bigger effect on enterprises than consumers. This report even predicts a rapid spreading of private enterprise networks over the next 5 years with cloud and telcos companies battling for the honors.
Here in this article, we will discuss private 5G networks and their ability to incubate innovative B2B services and applications.
What are private 5G networks?
Private 5G networks refer to virtual or physical cellular systems deployed for private use by governments, companies, and other institutions.
According to the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), such Non-Public Networks (NPNs) can unwind either as a public network-integrated NPN deployed with the support of a PLMN or as stand-alone network operated independently without depending on network functions provided by a PLMN.
Even though 4G and Wi-Fi are already used vastly in industrial applications, they were never designed particularly for business applications and have to be adapted to the specific needs of these environments.
In comparison, some key specifications of 5G networks, such as high network availability, ultra-low latency, high device density capabilities, and large volume data aggregation, dovetail perfectly with the emergent needs of Industry 4.0.
Why Private 5G Networks though?
A Deloitte paper on the topic provides some concise insights into the value of investing in private 5G networks.
One of the best advantages of private 5G networks is that they can be configured not only to particular needs of enterprise but also to the needs of specific locations or venues. Organizations can accelerate the resolution and identification of network-related by deploying dedicated teams.
And finally, organizations have more control over private than public networks which provides them more control over strategic issues like residency, data access, and sovereignty, service levels, and security.
Major requirements of Private 5G networks
Ericsson, the giant of telecommunications and networking defines five major requirements for private 5G networks.
- Private 5G networks must guarantee maximum availability through redundancies and robust solutions that decrease downtime to zero and afford more control over system maintenance.
- Private 5G networks must be capable of working and integrating with public 5G networks in order to ensure service continuity for mission-critical applications that may need to hop networks.
- Private 5G networks must endow adequate capacity, coverage, and handover functionality to raise reliability in data transmissions in terms of duration, volume, and the probability of success.
- Private 5G networks must enable end-to-end security for infrastructure, data, and personnel by complying with the three main security principles of integrity, confidentiality, and availability.
- Private 5G networks should provide enterprise teams more control over the key quality of service metrics such as throughput, jitter, latency, packet drop rate, etc., and permit them to tailor system performance and resource consumption to specific needs within the network.
If the business-specific next-generation capabilities of 5G networks transcend the limitations of existing 4G technologies, then private 5G networks provide organizations full flexibility and control in configuration, upgrading, performance, evolution, and security of their connected operations.
Such new technology is expected to transform multiple industries such as transportation, manufacturing, healthcare, public infrastructure, etc.
And agencies are already experimenting with this new technology. One recent study from ABI Research observed multiple enterprise initiatives across 15 countries to create private 5G networks either by acquiring spectrum directly from regulators or by leveraging the spectrum assets of MNOs.
Partnering for 5G growth
Private 5G network represents a radical shift in the way that businesses consume connectivity technologies.
In January this year, telecom research and analysis company Heavy Reading, supported by Intel, Ericsson, NetNumber, and Qualcomm, launched a report on the sentiments and dynamics driving essential private network ecosystem issues based on a survey of telecom operators and enterprise end-users.
Over half the operators in the survey expect private mobile networks to be a major contributor to their enterprise business within 5 years. And both enterprise users and operators had a favorable view of ecosystem partnerships.
However, there were a few minor variations between both groups on the topic of project leadership. Nearly half of the operators expected to lead private network engagements, with support from other integrators and vendors. On the other hand, enterprises placed a high value on multi-party engagement with the largest proportion indicating a preference for a combination of the vendor, telco, and integrator.
That important nuance notwithstanding, productive partnerships are going to be central to the success of private 5G network.
Our partnership with Verizon is structured to accelerate customers’ business strategy by combining our unique offerings and competencies.
With Verizon, enterprise customers can now focus on innovating by tapping into a world-class 5G Ultra Wideband network. With our decades of expertise and experience in professional IT services and high-performance cloud technologies, we enable businesses to align technical network implementations with their strategic business objectives.
Together, deliver unbeatable IT infrastructure development and world-class management of performance-optimized IT and cloud services across a global operational network.