Private 5G Networks
In large, complex environments with critical applications and devices, physical obstacles and interference make reliable wireless connectivity difficult. Traditional options fall short. Private 5G networks address these challenges by giving organizations full control over coverage, performance, and policies.
What is a private 5G network?
In most large spaces where organizations have business- and mission-critical devices and applications, extensive physical barriers and signal interference make wireless connectivity very challenging. Wi-Fi wasn’t designed with mobility in mind, plus it doesn’t scale well.
Private cellular is a dedicated network — 5G or 4G LTE — with its own infrastructure within a defined geographic area to support a specific organization’s business- and mission-critical requirements. An enterprise can tailor coverage, performance, and policies for its own devices and applications. Private 5G combines the control and fixed costs of Wi-Fi with the flexibility and security of public cellular.
Wi-Fi vs. Private 5G vs. Public 5G
These connectivity options each play unique but complementary roles in today’s digital landscape, with the best solution often being a hybrid – a combination of solutions to address different needs in the most efficient and cost-effective way. For example, public 5G reliability can be improved by using network slicing for key use cases.
Learn more by exploring these blog posts:
What is a Private Cellular Network? | Private 5G vs Wi-Fi: the new wave of Wide-Area LAN | Private 5G Security vs WLAN and Wi-Fi
Benefits of private 5G networks
Private 5G networks provide seamless coverage with powerful radios that covering more area with less infrastructure than Wi-Fi. It’s a critical benefit for enterprises as they monitor CapEx investment costs and total cost of ownership.
With Wi-Fi, edge devices are forced to decide when to switch from one AP to another. Private 5G networks are driven by a cellular core that controls the handoffs between radios, which are few and far between. Thus, users get consistent connectivity regardless of how mobile their applications may be.
Using isolated spectrum for a private 5G network allows businesses to attain the low latency necessary for technologies like autonomous robots and vehicles, remote control, and real-time video monitoring. Heightened network intelligence means latency stays consistent and predictable.
Private 5G use cases and applications
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What are the key components of a private 5G network?
Before you begin planning your own deployment, it can be very helpful to understand what the core components of a private network are, and what they do.
A network controller houses the private 5G core, a critical piece of architecture that serves as the brain of the private 5G network. The core manages and routes data traffic between devices and external networks, such as the internet or other private networks.
The Radio Access Network, or RAN, includes various components that work together to transmit and receive signals back and forth between the connected devices, or user quipment. These private 5G RAN components include basebands — for radio compute and signal processing — radios, antennas, and small cells.
Private SIMs, which can be either a physical SIM card or embedded eSIM, enable authentication to the private 5G or LTE cellular core before connected devices such as cell phones, security cameras, inventory scanners, and routers can join the network.
User equipment, or UEs, are the edge devices that require reliable, low-latency mobile connectivity. UEs range from AMRs and AGVs to scanners, tablets, and phones. Private 5G SIMs can be activated inside some UEs. For other private 5G use cases, enterprises use fit-for-purpose cellular routers that connect to user equipment via Wi-Fi, wires, or Bluetooth.
Private 5G management can be done on-premises or via a cloud-based network management platform.
Private 5G networks FAQs
Private 5G is a dedicated cellular network controlled by a single organization, giving them direct control over coverage, security, performance, and integration with their OT/IT systems for mission-critical use cases. Public 5G is a wide-area operator network shared by many users, optimized for broad mobility and coverage rather than one enterprise’s site-specific needs. In practice, enterprises often use both together, with private 5G handling sensitive, high-performance workloads across very large sites and public 5G serving workers, vehicles, and devices out in the wider world.
Private 5G deployments usually are completed through multi-vendor collaboration. Deployments include cellular network operators, user equipment providers, solution resellers, and private 5G solution vendors such as Ericsson Enterprise Wireless with its Ericsson Private 5G product. The stages of private 5G deployments include planning design, setup and installation, IT/OT integration and validation, and network optimization.
Enterprises that deploy a private 5G network have to use either shared spectrum, unlicensed spectrum, or licensed spectrum. CBRS in the U.S. is a prime example of a lightly licensed but shared spectrum. Using licensed spectrum is quite common, as network operators lease their spectrum to end users or third parties. In the latter scenario, the enterprise pays for the spectrum but maintains full control over its own private cellular network.
Enterprises can combine several add-on solutions to help make a Wi-Fi network very secure. Private 5G is more inherently secure than Wi-Fi because it uses licensed cellular spectrum and involves SIM-based authentication.
Common Private 5G use cases between industries, but use cases that are ideal in various places and scenarios include push to talk, scanners, tablets, sensors, video cameras and computer vision, AMRs, AGVs, drones, and remote-controlled equipment.
