Please note that this article comes from a new editorial report by RCR Wireless on “Private 5G in Industry 4. 0: Hype vs. Reality. “It is a continuation of an introductory section, presented here. The full report deepens the discussion and can be downloaded for free here. It is based on (and expands on) interviews and articles from the past two months, the links to which are connected in the text below.
Away from gadget brands and the exclusive threat they might or might not face (see policy here and here, and in a variety of ways), there’s another noisy category of “vendors” that interact directly with businesses, and that consists most commonly of formula integrators and specialist vendors, plus some progressive carriers lately, and potentially a glut of giant IT resellers. They are the default sales channel for personal 5G and claim to “understand this technology” or talk like them. And if you need an opposing tale about the truth of the hype, they’re going to tell it.
NTT DATA, which sells enterprise 5G from Celona and Cisco (in addition to Nokia on a more ad hoc basis), claims to have a “$500 million pipeline of opportunities with some of the world’s most disruptive brands. “For reference, it cites Global Market Insights, which says that the 5G personal market will generate $42 billion in global profits through 2032, up 40% from 2024 and roughly in line with ABI’s high-level forecast (see policy here). Its own studies indicate that 86% of corporations are “”The company has signed a new bilateral sales agreement with Schneider Electric to package private 5G with the French company’s “modular data center” product (EcoStruxure), as a data center in a shipping container, with power and air conditioning controls. etc.
NTT has installed 5G in all of Schneider Electric’s “smart factories” in the United States. The two corporations have just rolled out their joint formula on a 30-hectare multi-tenant commercial campus in Marienpark Berlin, the German capital. fortune in Industry 4. 0 with the chemical corporations Albemarle and LyondellBasell in the U. S. In the U. S. , the automaker BMW in Germany (and in all likelihood in the U. S. ) is a major player in the U. S. NTT is involved in BMW’s new 5G factory there) and the airports of Cologne and Frankfurt in Germany, and a few others by smart measure (the city of Las Vegas, RAI Amsterdam). “We’re in large/multi-site verticals,” says Parm Sandhu, the company’s head of 5G business.
“Anything over 500,000 square feet, $5 billion in revenue and $50 million in annual IT spend,” he adds. NTT is very interested in large-scale commercial installations, and 5G is the most successful, according to the message. Sandhu cites product and process brands as key targets, as well as “large-scale” logistics at ports and airports. “That’s the sweet spot,” he says. This is where personal 5G shines: it translates into significant ROI savings. Because it provides cost-effective policies in complex environments, as well as quality of service and mission-critical applications. We’re starting to see double-digit millions of dollars. Offers in dollars. This takes time and effort, of course; But they’re coming.
NTT is not alone. Kyndryl, an IBM spin-off, has already talked about extending 5G to several Dow Chemical and Chevron Phillips Chemical (CPChem) plants, among a lot of anonymous references. Systems integrator Future Technologies, one of Nokia’s lower-profile favorites (but with great influence and role in the Kyndryl integrations discussed above), said in January that it had earned “several million dollars” among Fortune’s 150 industrial corporations and a $150 million backlog of new sales. At press time (April 2024), it published a note about receiving $14 million in orders from the U. S. power sector. U. S. in 2023; In the conversation, it says it could also evolve vertically through its spiraling earnings totals in 2023.
So, is it an exaggeration, or is it a real deal?Because Industry 4. 0 players are up to the task, in terms of significant volume. Peter Cappiello, CEO of Future Technologies, reflects: “It’s very frustrating to see those corporations make statements about the drivers they sell. I mean, we get paid to do this; These are genuine networks. We’re personal. We don’t have debts. A lot of other corporations [communicating about commercial implementations] have raised capital and don’t even have commercial customers. We’re transforming our network with clients we’ve been working with for years. We’ve been in the personal cell phone business for 14 years, so we’re much more mature than most.
He lists a number of visitor references (which will need to be kept personal, he says) and reads them as a who’s who of the pioneering American brands in the LTE/5G personal sector, to the point, at most, that their fingerprints appear. This is the case with the most serious personal networks in the United States. It includes factories, refineries, mines, ports, military bases, and many more. He says, “We’ve gone from a stable $30 million to $40 million pipeline to over the $150 million mark. And you know, we’ve been around for 25 years; Some of them are talking about their pipes, and that’s absurd. But we upload seven numbers every week, because we have this methodology shown. .
What is the methodology? It’s worth hearing simply because the implication is that, far from hype and bluster, parts of the 5G personal market have opted for a planned procedure to identify the problem, articulate the value, and implement the solution. Cappiello explains: “We are introduced, we have the idea, we get the plan: supplier X for the radio, supplier Y for the kernel; or maybe X for both. We’re in usage instances, we’re on devices Then we set up a 30-minute call; where I provide a few slides about the company and then pass the baton to the former chief technology officer of Georgia-Pacific to walk through a series of usage instances and live programs in our own living lab.
A little history here: Cappiello hired Gary Hill of U. S. pulp and paper manufacturer Georgia-Pacific 4 years ago as lead director of operations and innovation with a project to “build a living lab. “Future Technologies has invested about $2 million in the site, Cappiello “because it’s the instances of use that drive all of this,” he explains. Hill has the right profile, he says; In Georgia-Pacific, Hill ranked among Intel, Verizon’s and AWS’s smartest production consumers. “It’s vital for consumers – that someone on our side has worked alongside them. “He continues, “So we say, ‘Okay, we’ll show them what we’re doing. ‘ And we show them a 5G core network, they see it and they perceive it.
He replays the conversation: “‘Oh, it’s a waiter,’ they say. ” Yes, and the core is a telecommunications workload. “”Okay, I understand. ” Well, it’s all good; then we show undeniable use cases, such as some Zebra tablets and scanners. They say, “Well, yes; we have them too. ” Very well; Yes; We follow them. Then we showed them the exercise space, 3 study rooms for 25 people; We show them the exercise laps. We know that our purpose is to exercise and empower them. And then we show them all those top-notch use cases: connected worker, remote worker, with any and all devices you can imagine; a HoloLens running Touch, RealWear running Librestream. They say, “Okay. We love it.
“And then we have an IoT fitness sensor running AI/ML and a 5G AMR running in the background. But we also have a conveyor belt with a fiber-connected Cognex camera. “But did I imagine that they were promoting 5G to us? In this environment we have it all. Because you have it all. We wired because you wired. We have Wi-Fi, because you guys have Wi-Fi. We have constant wireless broadband and a public cellular network. Because it’s like a workers’ laboratory. There is no such thing as a white coat. We don’t intend to show what is imaginable in 2030. ” You are a genuine company,” we say, “with genuine operations. “We will show everything that the visitor can implement today, in 30 minutes.
All of this shows that even with just 0. 0003% of the addressable market covered, personal LTE/5G is making its mark on some businesses; He says resellers such as Future Technologies, NTT and others, as well as handset vendors such as Nokia and Celona, among others, can sell their price to corporations in a language they perceive and keep their price high. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that mobile phones have a role to play in giant corporations; The question is how much work it does and how much market. And if you want a glimpse of the future, how 5G is making its way beyond the cutting edge of Industry 4. 0, then you may be doing worse than Ask a Checking Company. That’s what we did.
MIDDLE MARKET
At the workshops of Spirent, founded in the U. K. , the clearest trend is toward smaller, simpler systems, says Stephen Douglas, the company’s chief strategy officer. “We’re seeing the emergence of cheaper, smaller-sized systems, all-in-one personal networks, especially in North America; and develop features that can be implemented in an automated way. The goal is to abandon features, pricing, and automate complexity, and thus open up new markets. The ambition is to make 5G personal available to much more than giant corporations with deep pockets, of which until now there has tended to be a house of herbs. “The procurement industry needs to sell to small businesses,” he says.
Small businesses, like in the mass market? Douglas qualifies his earlier statement: “Well, right now it’s probably a less small person and more of a medium size,” he says. “[But] there’s been a complete shift in mindset – from slow, complex 5G installations to lighter 5G installations. offers, with just a few radio cells and a fancy core network, with only the networking purposes you need, rather than everything that goes to a public network. It’s also the Verizon Business line, which has refocused and expanded its global business. operations (“5G acceleration” equipment) for the past 18 months and is suddenly absorbing its mid-market sales in the U. S. U. S.
Jennifer Artrley, head of the US operator’s Edge-5G commercial team, comments: “We’ve shut down so many personal networks in the US mid-market as we have been shutting down so many people. So far in 2024 as we did for all of last year. The funnel has more than doubled; Opportunities at the last stage of the funnel have more than tripled. We’re there and I’m adding salespeople to the team. Of course, that sum: as many sales in one quarter of 2024 as in 4 quarters of 2023. “It might as well be four times, which is not very high. But Artley’s unit has about 250, compared with about 150 at the start of 2023, and Verizon Business is in the game — primarily, perhaps strangely — across the U. S. U. S. ” Mid-market. “
In other words, even as deep-pocketed global enterprises (e. g. , $5 billion corporations with $50 million budgets) embark on complex Industry 4. 0 integrations, as a precursor to mass market adoption, Verizon Business is turning to LTE/Lightweight LTE. 5G LTE in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMBs), on CBRS waves in shared access, and in localized portions of their own spectrum. Of course, it doesn’t pretend that this is the case; the mass market is destined to be limited to the first market, and the first 5G personal market is destined for the pyrotechnics of Industry 4. 0 production lines. ” Honestly, we had discarded that component of the market. We just didn’t think the SME sector was the right target for personal networking. “
The fact that the SMB market is already the right target (lately in sales and prophetically in testing) suggests that the hype has substance. Let’s go back to Douglas, who says that products tested in Spirent’s labs do more than simply eliminate generation. and summarize the complexity of automation software; Vendors are also combining PC hardware and application software, he says. This is Nokia’s strategy with its MXIE system, designed to run Industry 4. 0 programs across the core network, as well as with its multi-layer 5G personal connectivity portfolio, which is expected to be bolstered (after the summer) by a new “ultra-compact”. edition of your Digital Automation Cloud (DAC) product.
The Finnish publisher needs to address at an early stage the mass market, mainly composed of SMEs, which is the engine of the global economy. Statistics are hard to judge, but the Small Business Administration (SBA) says that SMEs make up 99% of all personal businesses and 47% of the personal sector in the United States; The figures say the same in the more “industrial” countries. “We said 14 million [industrial] sites, that’s one million giant sites, two or three million medium-sized sites, and everything else is small or very small,” says Stéphane Daeuble, chief marketing officer of Nokia’s business division. “That’s why we want to access those markets. “
The “ultra-compact” DAC product, whose designation is not yet known, will make its way to some radios and compete with Wi-Fi in small rooms. Its DAC Compact version, introduced last year, supports up to 4 radios in small and medium-sized rooms. Macro-sized indoor venues (up to 20,000 square meters). The original DAC solution, which drove Nokia’s sales peak, includes up to 100 cells in campus configurations (more than 20,000 square meters). The DAC portfolio is complemented through its macro size. Modular Private Wireless (MPW) product for giant projects, and its micro-sized Perimeter Network (NPN) product, which fits in a bag (like Spirent checkbooks) and is custom designed and resold through specialized partners.
In reality, Nokia’s business focus is still on giant companies; It’s just that those corporations need a lighter solution to set up shop in their smaller locations. But logic dictates that the mass market of SMBs will stick to Nokia’s Industry 4. 0 offensive, as will be the case with its competitors, and the hype will increase. credibility again. Daeuble says, “More and more giant corporations are asking us for smaller locations. We’ve made their sites big and we’ve made their sites medium, and now they’re asking us to cover 2,000 small distribution centers with the same solutions. Or they say, “Okay, we’ve done the top 40 ports; I need to make the next 60 medium-sized ports and then the next two hundred small ports, but they need something cheaper.
He adds: “These markets weren’t very aware of personal wireless before, nor were they willing to do much with it. But now we can give them a radio and a blade, and cover the whole [small] port. ” The feeling is that Nokia is autonomous; But testing labs say competitors are preparing similar options. “This clustering trend is definitely entering the realm of testing,” Douglas says. In some ways, the trend toward simplification is almost a direct reaction to intermittent progress in manufacturing. , the original Industry 4. 0 style for personal 5G. That is not the case; This is a natural evolution and a logical reaction to evolve the generation in the mass market.
But production is a challenge, Douglas notes, and personal 5G remains a next-generation that, for now, doesn’t offer enough capacity or confidence for production corporations to fully stay on their feet. It will happen, but it will take time, the message says. ” It’s a more complex environment; Usage instances are more challenging. Many feature the feature sets of editions 16 and 17; and the features of the 16th edition only began to be available to device brands last year; 17 will come this year. So there’s a delay in production; and also a challenge, because of the focus on smartphones and [then on] CPE drives. . . Only now are we starting to see genuine attention paid to commercial devices.
Notes that there is renewed interest in RedCap for commercial IoT; Again, this is a generation of the future, which doesn’t have enough immediate cost for manufacturing companies, in general, to extend their own 5G reporting on loaded multi-site systems. ” RedCap probably wouldn’t be available on the market At best, the market will last for another year. Therefore, the production industry is largely stuck in test mode, simply because of the availability of generation,” he says. And also because of the complicated terrain in the production sector; It seems like it’s all smart for testing companies. But Verizon Business, as part of its own upgrade strategy, has reclassified production as a “two/three opportunity. “
Arvin Singh, who was hired as global head of 5G solutions and innovation at the end of 2022 when Artley’s own 5G unit paused to take stock, reflects: “The team looked at all those complex spaces, all this production with robotics and so on. Which is exciting, but there’s a roadmap and a sales cycle, and a total ecosystem that goes with it. Frankly, Industry 4. 0 has been buzzing on personal media for two or three years. And the project that Jen (Artley) gave us 18 months. The previous thing was to land and expand, without losing sight of those two or three possibilities on the horizon. The question was: what can we do now to get into the game?
As we have seen, his access to gambling, 3 years after raising his flag on foreign soil with Associated British Ports, and 18 months after taking control of his own organizational structure, came through the American “middle market. “Let’s just say that Verizon Business has eschewed costly Industry 4. 0 deals to opt for “family” deals on the CBRS spectrum. I mean, that can’t be true, when all of a sudden there’s the possibility of identifying yourself as a 5G provider for enterprises in any market. (spectrum permitting) in the world?” Not at all,” Artley replies. We cover the whole gamut. We localize programs for more fundamental CBRS implementations, but the most exciting opportunities lie in global companies.
He gives as an example his multi-core installation at an Audi test track in Germany, to reflect global network situations in one place. “It was a long progression cycle as we worked to see what was imaginable. And what’s imaginable is pretty phenomenal. Audi’s configuration policy can be found on the RCR Wireless website. The verbal exchange moves on to other (unlisted) deals and how the company’s motto “land and expand” translates into giant companies. “In the mid-market, that means volume; – Get a lot of wins on the board. In a global enterprise, it’s about promoting the first site and then expanding the usage instances in the most sensitive part of it, or expanding to more sites.
Verizon Business sold its first personal LTE/5G network (probably LTE?) to an oil and fuel refinery in August, it says; It sold five more to the same visitor in October and seven more in December. “They see the benefits and they need more, and that extends geographically. Similarly, he recounts how an industry-first pharmaceutical company for the equipment took a personal LTE/5G network from Verizon Business in recent months, and came back “two months later” with a much more complex case. It’s a more complex network and solution,” he says. And more complex than the example of oil and fuel. “
It adds color. ” It’s 15 million square feet and 30 buildings; 1,800 radios and a network. This is the entire campus, expanded from a small-scale setup at another location. In a market where scalability upwards and outwards (applications and installations) has proven complicated for several years, such deployments constitute a true bi-directional “expansion” and a testament to an authorized operator adopting unauthorized spectrum in global markets. But while those are wonderful examples of large-scale personal LTE/5G, it’s not what you might call traditional production, as in the kind of discrete meeting line field that exists with Industry 4. 0 in popular legend.
In fact, the takeaway from this fight for anecdotal, usually uncited sales is that (discrete) production is a hard sell for personal 5G, and that any disappointment in the broader market is likely due to this; In addition, the task of making a poorly crafted edition of commercial 5G applicable to brands has forced the seller market to look elsewhere. That’s what happened. Precipitated by the anti-complexity trend, 5G has landed in other skies. “Most of the expansion in the last 12 months has not been in production, but in seaports, public places, government and defense,” Douglas said. It was basically about offering politics to giant spaces on campus. “
This is repeated in everyone. For perspective: Nokia, which claims a roughly 50% share (GSA) of the LTE/5G personal market, has 710 consumers (as of March 2024); A portion (49%) basically consider the old and long-standing MPW networks, which predate the DAC’s attack on the liberalized “vertical” bands. They are most often found in the government and application sectors, where macro LTE/5G is still needed. About a quarter (23%) work in production and a fifth (20%) in transport/logistics; Both markets started from scratch 4 years ago, when the DAC formula was introduced. But the fastest growth, according to Nokia, is not in discrete production (parts and assemblies), on which the hype has been focused, but in the production of processes (ingredients and recipes). .
In other words, it is the manufacture of beverages, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, etc. , as well as ports and airports (logistics), which is the most emblematic production of automobiles and machinery. Daeuble says, “We’ve ignored certain markets, such as process manufacturing, which is divided into a dozen segments, where our products make a lot of sense and add a lot of value. Because they are less complex in terms of automation, for example. That’s why we’ve put a lot of attention into that and we’re getting a lot of important contracts. Leading clients such as BASF, Chevron Phillips and Dow are entering this basket. “But we also have 10 new markets this year,” he adds. soil. “
This article is from a new editorial report by RCR Wireless on “Private 5G in Industry 4. 0: Hype vs. Reality. “The full report goes deeper and can be downloaded for free here.