Top
image credit: Vecteezy

Private 5G Networks Will Grow Faster than Public 5G Networks, Peaking in 2027

September 28, 2021

Category:

A recent study estimates that the deployments of private 5G networks will grow faster than public 5G over the next 10 years, peaking in 2027, when they are expected to generate $19.3 billion in equipment sales before saturation sets in. Deployment rates of private enterprise 5G will vary widely by both geography and industry sector. Let’s see what’s what. 

A Wi-Fi 6 Deployment Boom

We will very soon see the start of a boom in enterprise Wi-Fi deployments similar to the boom that occurred around the advent of the latest 6E standard, offering greater capacity and performance than the current generation, closer to 5G. However, the growth of Wi-Fi will be limited largely to North America and some parts of Europe, where it will peak in 2024, after which an increasing number of sites will move to 5G for more demanding, industrial-type use. These are the findings of the latest report—“Private Networks Driving Opportunities in 5G and Wi-Fi”—from RAN Research, the wireless forecast division of Rethink Technology Research.

The forecast covers economic development regions and industry verticals, identifying manufacturing as the key driver for private 5G networks, in line with the Industry 4.0 revolution, but also with the strong overall economic growth. Healthcare, transportation, energy, and government business stand out as the main sectors where private 5G networks and Wi-Fi 6E will be deployed faster than everywhere else in the economy.

Spectacular 5G growth

The cumulative growth of the private 5G segment will be truly spectacular, with 26.6 million networks deployed worldwide by 2028, up from 1.1 million in 2021. This exponential growth will occur in all regions, but will be most notable in the four countries that now lead the field of private 5G networks, namely the US, Germany, China, and Japan. 

Let’s Not Forget 4G

While 5G will account for most of the growth over the entire forecast period, there will still be a significant number of private 4G networks that will be deployed over the next few years, concluded the UK analysts. 

Similarly, on the Wi-Fi front, the last 5th generation is dominant at present, but it will be the latest 6E that takes over during the forecast period and offers an alternative to 5G for some of the emerging cases. 

There will also be a resurgence of heterogeneous networks combining Wi-Fi and cellular communications, as new AI-based techniques finally offer the smooth handover that has proved elusive for some time now. 

New Players in the Mobile Arena

Experts estimate that the new generations of private and dedicated 5G networks will attract new players in the mobile arena. Telecom operators are facing serious competition, not only from new service providers, but also from private companies themselves, as they begin to bypass the big telecom players and build their own 5G technology networks. Furthermore, established technology providers are themselves facing a challenge from new providers entering the Open RAN market and showing overwhelming optimism.

The Benefits of Private and Dedicated 5G Networks Are Unquestionable

Without a doubt, private and dedicated 5G networks offer a wide range of benefits compared with other options, such as classic wired connections. According to the GSMA’s guide to private and dedicated 5G networks for manufacturing, production, and supply chains, the main benefits are (but not limited to):

– Strict security, privacy, and data isolation requirements

– Flexibility of device movement and deployment efficiency

– Mobile private and dedicated networks can deliver required coverage and capacity with high quality and reliability through 5G ‘Ultra-Reliable, Low-Latency Communications’

– High bandwidth coverage, predictable error and delay characteristics, and device capacity to ensure efficiency and safety

– Uplink/downlink bandwidth ratios can be varied, utilizing the new radio interface and Time Division Duplexing (TDD) technology in 5G

– time-critical applications are enabled through the Time Synchronization Network (TSN) features available in 5G networks which support the integration of legacy Ethernet TSN networks. 

*If you want to read more on the subject, you can find here the most prominent cases, as well as the top benefits of 5G private networks.

Private wireless networks will be deployed at a faster rate than 5G as a whole in most markets, as mobile networks together with edge computing become capable of meeting more use cases and enabling new applications. Even if the deployment of 5G networks (private or public) and Wi-Fi 6E will be affected in the short term by chip shortages or the Covid-19 pandemic, both technologies will enable much greater harmonization within the private network field in the longer term.