Description
The private wireless market will be a dominant trend for decades to come as corporations within the enterprise and industrial segments seek to gain more control and reduce dependency upon carriers’ networks. Private networks leverage LTE and 5G for internal/onsite coverage as well as intra-company communications between business locations including smart buildings, factories, and other facilities. Spectrum to deploy private LTE and 5G networks includes licensed, unlicensed, and shared to regionally dedicated.
Also known as the non-public network market, enterprise, industrial and government entities may operate their own networks in a stand-alone manner and/or be integrated with public networks. In terms of radio frequency usage, the private wireless market may utilize CBRS as well as both unlicensed and licensed wireless spectrum, which may be used in conjunction with cellular operators or neutral host providers.
Private Wireless Market Dynamics
The addressable market for the private wireless market is millions of buildings (offices, factories, warehouses), hundreds of thousands of hotels, tens of thousands of college campuses, thousands of event centers and airports, and hundreds of sporting stadiums. For example, almost 100 billion square feet of floor space across millions of commercial facilities in the United States have poor outside-to-inside wireless coverage.
Over ninety percent of industrial facilities continue to rely upon wired connections such as industrial Ethernet. Unlike prior iterations of cellular, 5G will provide a viable alternative to fixed connectivity for smart factories and other facilities that suffer from signal quality issues due to interference. With private LTE maturing just as 5G is soon to come into commercial realization, the industrial internet market will have options for leveraging 4G for a portion of their needs and 5G New Radio (5GNR) for more mission critical communications.
5GNR has a very important role in support of Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC) and Time Sensitive Networks (TSN) for the non-public network market. For example, certain industrial applications require URLLC and TSN support that cannot be supported by WiFi. For critical communications and IoT apps, 5G represents an alternative to WiFi that provides the type of URLLC support needed for certain mission-critical solutions such as those found in industrial automation. For example, the need to get periodic updates related to pressure values of a critical industrial machine represents a need for ultra-reliability as one missed measurement could mean a damaged machine(s), lost productivity, and/or other bad consequences.
For business and government users, Mind Commerce sees a private wireless market option to utilize edge computing, LTE and 5G infrastructure from incumbent carriers, use enterprise-owned equipment, or a hybrid combination of both. In all cases, enterprise and industrial customers will need to also deploy Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) infrastructure to ensure low latency communications. MEC platforms need to be close to the point of computing to ensure low latency as required by certain applications. This is in contrast with the traditional centralized cloud computing model that requires back-haul, which is major factor in reducing overall data throughput.
While some of the aforementioned will be offered by carriers on an infrastructure as a service or platform as a service basis, many private wireless deployments will be completely owned and/or controlled by the business itself. In these instances, business customers will interface with legacy carrier networks only for communications as a service and the associated ability to connect to the rest-of-world outside the business domain. Some computing and communications platform vendors, such as Nokia, are developing a direct to business customer private wireless market with LTE, 5G, and edge computing owned and controlled by businesses rather than carriers.
Future of the Private Wireless Market
Enterprise and industrial segments will continue to deploy private networks utilizing LTE and WiFi. Many of these networks will evolve to 5G and include edge computing to maximize overall throughput and minimize latency, which will be crucial for certain critical communications solutions such as industrial process automation. Enterprise and industrial customers may choose a combination of communications and computing as a service from carriers or purchase infrastructure that is managed by a third-party entity. Examples of some recent carrier-supported private wireless market deployments include the following:
- Verizon: The company recently partnered with U.K. port operator Associated British Ports (ABP) to provide the Port of Southampton with a private 5G wireless network. The port of Southampton is a part of a large supply chain, accounting for £40 billion in U.K. exports yearly. Southampton also serves as the country’s largest port for cars (nearly 900,000/year) and cruise liners. The network runs on the Nokia Digital Automation Cloud, which offers edge computing capabilities.
- AT&T: The company established a public/private partnership with Chicago’s MxD (Manufacturing x Digital), has created a 5G private network with funding from the Department of Defense and other private members. The wireless network is meant to help companies learn how to improve their manufacturing operations through 5G networks. The MxD private network uses only two radios, one with mmWave 5G and the other with sub-6 5G that connects to AT&T’s central network core.
Carrier-supported private LTE and 5G networks will consist of Virtualized Network Solutions, Dedicated/Non-Virtualized Network Solutions, and Hybrid Network Solutions with an anticipated global market opportunity of $12.6, $9.2B, and $17.1B respectively.
Private wireless market deployments will differ greatly based on whether they conform to a carrier-owned/controlled model or to one based on enterprise/industrial ownership and control. In the case of the former, the carrier will be required to provision and administer apps and/or allow access by third parties, such as Over-the-Top (OTT) service providers. In the case of the latter, the enterprise or industrial customer will manage their own apps, or more likely, hire their own third-party team to manage on their behalf.
While some business customers will vie for virtualized instances of carrier infrastructure/platforms, other enterprise, industrial, and government customers will go with private networks within their own control and/or facilities. In other words, some of these private networks are going to be in competition with carrier communication services as the likes of Nokia are actually competing with their own customers (e.g. carriers are customers of infrastructure providers like Nokia, Ericsson, etc.).
5G Network Subscription within Private Wireless Market to Exceed Public Networks by 2030
While many of these changes in public versus private networks currently impact the radio access network and edge computing alone (e.g. businesses still need connectivity with carriers for WAN communications), it sets the stage for potential evolution towards a more distributed service realization environment that may involve a more dispersed core network that is not completely owned/controlled by the legacy carriers.
With private wireless market subscription set to overtake public by 2030, carriers are highly advised to spend most of their efforts on solutions for business customers (e.g. enterprise, industrial, and government clients). This is advised even if it means losing some of their communications business due to private wireless deployment in which the business customer owns and operates a portion of their own internal network.
Leveraging unique 5G capabilities will be extremely important for the private wireless market. For example, leading communication service providers will take an end-to-end approach to 5G network slicing that leverages disaggregation and virtualization of both radio and core network elements. In the core network, NFV and SDN capabilities are leveraged to meet QoS/QoE requirements, whereas in the radio network separation of radio access network (RAN) elements by real-time vs. static functions is important to 5G network slicing.
Private Wireless Market Report
This report evaluates the private wireless market including LTE and 5G as well as supporting mobile edge computing solutions. The report assesses the market drivers for private wireless implementation and the technology needs for operational support. The report also analyzes leading players, strategies, and solutions in the private wireless ecosystem including infrastructure suppliers, service providers, application providers, testing and other support companies.
The role of third-party application management providers in the private wireless market is also investigated such as over-the-top provider support of edge computing apps and services. The report evaluates the market for edge computing, private LTE and 5G for enterprise and industrial segments, and private LTE for government networks including public safety. The report includes forecast for the aforementioned as well as the 5G indoor wireless market from 2021 to 2026.
Select findings from this report include:
- Private wireless networks will be supported by a combination of LTE, 5G, and mobile edge computing
- The non-public network market may either receive all services from carriers or networking as a service only
- It is anticipated that private wireless network services will be a major 5G solution area for telecom service providers
- Carriers will be competing against core cloud providers such as AWS who seek to extend their services to the service edge
- Both carriers and businesses (enterprise, industrial, and government) will rely upon third-party managed service providers
