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Private 5G Networks Study Highlights Opportunities for Cloud Providers, Potential Challenges for Telcos

Companies Looking to Deploy Private Cellular Networks See Them as Technology Enablers, Not Communications Tools

Foster City, CA – July 13, 2022: In the world of business networking there are few topics hotter than 5G—specifically private 5G networks. Though consumer benefits of 5G have been disappointing to date, most industry observers and participants believe the technology’s biggest impact is going to be in the enterprise world. A new study from TECHnalysis Research suggests that the early enthusiasm is reasonably well founded, but also that there are several surprising twists that defy common expectations about how, where and by whom the technology is going to be deployed.

The study is based on a computer-aided telephone interview (CATI) survey of 400 US-based IT decision makers at organizations that either currently have or are planning to deploy private cellular networks. Respondents came from both medium-sized companies (those having from 100-999 employees) and large enterprises (those having 1,000 or more employees). They were asked a range of questions about the applications, devices, purposes, expectations, partners and other aspects of their deployments to get a sense of how these networks are being used in the real-world and how companies plan to use them in the future.

“One of the many fascinating aspects of the findings is that organizations are thinking about two distinctly different types of applications for private 5G networks,” noted Bob O’Donnell, the president and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research and author of the report. “The most common intended application is as a new type of general-purpose network, but one that’s expected to be faster, more secure, and more reliable than some of their existing WiFi networks. In addition,” O’Donnell continued, “many organizations are hoping to leverage private cellular for IoT-focused applications such data sensor collection and remote device management, which is more in line with what many people had been expecting.”

In both instances, however, the focus is clearly on more data-intensive applications and for that reason, companies are looking to different types of partners to help them with their deployments. Notably, as shown in Figure 1, the top expected partner type that companies plan to work with for private 5G networks are the big cloud computing providers, with telco carriers as the number two choice.

Fig. 1

Combine this with the fact that 84% of respondents planning to install a private 5G network in the future (the average expected time to start to deployment was 18 months) will be starting with an indoor network in a single building suggests strongly that organizations are seeing these networks as extensions to their computing environments and plan to use them accordingly.

Among the many other surprising aspects from the results are the clear preference for using sub-6 frequencies to run the network, as opposed to the essentially free option of CBRS (Citizens Broadband Radio Service), and the fact that cellular-connected PCs are expected to be some of the most common devices on these private networks.

The highlights of the TECHnalysis Research Private 5G Networks Study are available in PDF format and can be downloaded for free here. The complete 96-slide version of the report with detailed breakdowns for every question and additional analysis is available for purchase. For additional information, please e-mail the author at bob@technalysisresearch.com.

Founded by technology market research veteran Bob O’Donnell, TECHnalysis Research, LLC provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community.