Pairing private 5G and Wi-Fi: Can it open the door to innovation?

In most industries, a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 48% is simply unheard of.
But that’s what we are seeing with the global private 5G market.

The rollout of 5G has advanced mobile networks around the world, and in a dozen countries so far, governments have now assigned 5G spectrum to be used by enterprises. This is what is referred to as private 5G. And it is predicted to grow 1400% – from 4,000 private cellular networks in 2022 to more than 60,000 networks in 2028.

Private 5G and Wi-Fi will exist side-by-side, enabling new customer use cases where outdoor coverage and latency is important such as ports, defense applications, mining operations, and sporting events. And we’re not the only ones. Many enterprise IT departments are looking at what enterprise-ready private 5G solutions are on the market and how they can deploy complementary networks to optimize their connectivity.

Streamlined, unified solutions

Historically, complexity and cost have been hurdles to private cellular adoption. Private 5G was deemed too difficult and resource-intensive for enterprises to deploy and maintain. Integrating and managing the multiple components of such a network required specialized telecommunications expertise beyond that of most IT network managers and engineers.

Fortunately, recent advances in private cellular technologies and vendor offerings have smoothed the way for enterprise use and adoption.

Leading providers of enterprise networking are developing solutions that streamline private cellular and integrate it with Wi-Fi, enabling enterprise IT staff to use a single interface for provisioning and deploying private 5G. This brings together security, visibility, and management in one place, enabling IT departments to apply and manage policies uniformly across the combined private cellular and Wi-Fi networks – whether in the cloud, on-prem, or hybrid.

This unification of Wi-Fi and private 5G will allow networking teams to deploy private cellular in a similar manner as other networking products, like switches and access points, significantly decreasing the need for specialized cellular expertise. IT departments will be able to more easily trial private 5G in their own environments, giving them a better understanding of where and how to implement it.

In addition, for those enterprises working with communications service providers (CSPs), choosing a private cellular vendor who maintains a comprehensive partner ecosystem can help ensure a smooth deployment.

Opening the door to innovation

Private 5G actually allows throws open the doors of innovation, and for this it needs to be paired with Wi-Fi as well. 

There are five primary situations where customers are showing strong interest:

1.    Challenging radio environments. Where continuous communications are critical across massive shop floors with hard-to-reach pockets of airspace, like manufacturing, deploying private cellular networks in conjunction with Wi-Fi can eliminate coverage gaps.

2.    Rapidly-moving client devices. Private cellular was designed to operate at the pace of people walking. Therefore, in environments where wireless IoT and Industrial IoT (IIoT) devices move fast while requiring continuous exchanges of telemetry and control data, such as robotics in healthcare, warehousing, and industrial settings, private cellular is a good option.

3.    Large coverage areas, particularly outdoors. Whether a municipality, an airfield, or transportation complex, private cellular overcomes the challenges related to effectively cabling expansive areas for Wi-Fi and enables smart cities, seaports, energy generation, and utility distribution.

4.    Secure back-office communication at enterprises with significant public access. Enterprises that simultaneously provide public guest wireless access and require high-security or latency-sensitive connectivity can use private cellular to segregate public-facing traffic from back-office operations.

5.    Filling public cellular coverage gaps. Many enterprises not only experience significant gaps in coverage from the public cellular networks but also have determined that traditional solutions, like Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS), are not economically feasible. In collaboration with public network operators and assuming certain architectural challenges can be addressed, private cellular networks could, in the future, be leveraged to fill these gaps.

Start the journey now

With the private cellular adoption expected to be strong and fast, enterprises are already mapping out their evaluation and deployment strategies to ensure they can gain innovation advantages. From making cities smarter to improving surgical outcomes, enterprises are only beginning to scratch the surface of what they can accomplish by integrating Wi-Fi with private 5G.

Views are personal. The author is Executive Vice President and General Manager, HPE Aruba Networking