Let’s talk about
private 5G.

Why should businesses care about 5G?

“Digital transformation is really an overused term, but the truth is that you can’t really fight digital. It’s happening; you can drive it or let it happen to you, but it’s going to happen. Success depends upon injecting technology into the DNA of your business, your business processes, how you operate as a company and how you engage with your employees, partners and customers. 5G represents a seismic shift that unlocks incredible opportunity and innovation for our business customers. It’s not just about the increase in capacity, it opens up numerous new ways of digitising processes that can unlock a business’s potential. And that’s why Verizon has taken a leadership role in 5G globally and made major investments to bring it to life.”
—Scott Lawrence

“5G is much more than a technological evolution, it redefines how the world will connect. It’s a massive leap forward over 4G and will enable previously impossible use cases, like applications that require near-real-time responsiveness or thousands of IoT devices in a small space. But it’s when you connect 5G on the edge that the real magic happens. 5G will become the underlying fabric of an entire ecosystem of fully connected intelligent sensors, devices, and applications— all capable of transforming economic and business policies, and further blurring geographical and cultural boundaries.”
—Mehdi Quraishi

“Private 5G is foundational, enabling technology of Industry 4.0. It enables you to take inputs from the edge of the network in those operational spaces, interpret them and make interventions in near-real-time. That could be to do with people’s safety, like identifying anybody not wearing the right personal protective equipment and preventing them from entering a dangerous area. The almost instantaneous responsiveness that this automation enables is a real game-changer.”
—Martin Male

  5G is much more than a technological evolution, it redefines how the world will connect.”

—Mehdi Quraishi, General Manager - 5G, MEC and Innovation

How much of 5G’s potential have we seen so far?

“This is just the beginning; we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible. The majority of organisations that have started looking at 5G are still at the ideation or planning stages. Less than a third have got to the pilot stage or beyond.”
—Mehdi Quraishi

What would you say to somebody taking a ‘wait and see’ approach?

“I don’t think that you can a ord to do that anymore with technology in general, let alone 5G. The pace of change and the rapid evolution that’s happening across every industry mean that sitting on the side lines is not a recipe for success. Businesses need leaders that lean in and find use cases that help unlock the full potential of the organisation. Standing still actually means falling further and further behind the competition.”
—Scott Lawrence

“If you wait till there is no risk, then there would be no opportunity either. Some people say, ‘I can’t innovate, I need a suitable platform.’ Others say, ‘I can’t invest in a platform without a good use case.’ You need to start from somewhere, and I think private 5G is a really important start. If you start exploring the technology and see how it can solve your problems first, you can position yourself as a leader in your industry. You can start benefiting from this because it’s all about trying and failing, and trying and failing until you get the right business model, the right use case. And also, if you are a first mover, you will have more opportunity to influence the direction of development. Device manufacturers, app developers and service providers may look for your involvement in shaping their o erings. And, while 5G is still developing, it’s mature enough. Operators, like Verizon, have rolled it out as critical infrastructure. We wouldn’t have done that if it wasn’t safe and reliable.”
—Esmat Mirzamany

Who’s making the decision to invest in private 5G?

“What I’ve seen over the last 18 months is customers breaking down silos. We’re talking to more chief digital officers and chief transformation officers than people in traditional CIO or CTO roles. But for those customers that still have a more traditional IT organisation, it’s important not only to have the technical conversation, but also to have a business outcomes conversation at the C-level, so that they can see how this truly can impact their business: How it can improve experiences for their employees, their partners and ultimately their customers and give them a strategic advantage.”
—Scott Lawrence 

“The people we’re talking to about private 5G are often very different to those we’d talk to about a software-defined wide-area network. For example, one of the areas where a lot is happening currently is at test tracks. Vehicles fly around at up to 200 km/h, packed with cameras and sensors. Before, manufacturers had to rely on hard disks mounted in the boot to collect data. With private 5G, it’s possible to transmit the data back live, enabling near real-time analysis. And this can also be more secure, because as well as the security built into the network, the data need never leave the site—never touch a public network or public cloud. That’s an R&D conversation; other projects we’re working on are being driven by operations, marketing and other functions.”
—Juergen Broemmer

  We have the infrastructure and framework to onboard customers’ preferred vendors.”

—Esmat Mirzamany, International 5G Solutions Lead

Is 5G the answer to all on-site connectivity problems?

“Not all; it’s unlikely to replace Wi-Fi for office connectivity for example, but a lot of them. A great example is an airport we spoke to recently. It wanted to convert an unused hangar into a freight-handling facility, but the cost of connecting it to the WAN was eye-watering. With a private 5G service it could connect the building quickly and easily, then provide Wi-Fi access. Traditionally, manufacturing facilities have relied on wired connections. With private 5G you could eliminate that reliance and make it easier to reconfigure to address changes in demand.”
—Leighton Griffiths

“Private 5G is not the only option—much as we may love it to be. Wi-Fi 6 is quite good and it has a broad device ecosystem— especially in the consumer space. Do we expect 5G to displace Wi-Fi from the market entirely? No. But there’s room for both. In simple terms, I would say Wi-Fi would be more for IT environments and private 5G for OT environments.”
—Esmat Mirzamany

How important is the partner ecosystem to making a success of private 5G/edge computing projects?

“It’s critical. And that’s why we, Verizon, strive to be flexible. We can provide customers with a list of partners we’re already integrated with or they can ‘bring their own partner.’ We have the infrastructure and framework to onboard customers’ preferred vendors. They can manage the applications themselves or they can ask us to manage it for them. We can provide a managed platform, and then you can host different applications on it, isolated from each other to give the required security and control.”
—Esmat Mirzamany

“Unlocking the value of private 5G requires a combination of devices, connectivity, AI/ML, big data processing, cybersecurity and more. You need to connect the devices to your systems to get the data into your platform; you need to build and apply an AI/ML model; and you need to do it all securely. That requires an ecosystem of partners, and that’s where Verizon excels. We have almost 400 partners that can help accelerate and de-risk innovation and bring value.”
—Mehdi Quraishi

“I think some companies are very good at managing their suppliers today, but I don’t think any organisation is very good at the pace that this is going to happen. That’s onboarding and getting maturity with their ecosystem to deliver a particular value-adding service to their customers. That’s the real challenge. And the organisations that are able to do that, they can spot organisations they can work with. They can get a product and service delivered to the market that’s supportable and delivers customer value. That’s going to be the key success criteria. And I think that’s going to be a challenge for every organisation on the planet.”
—Martin Male

How reliable is private 5G?

“We’ve been working on 5G for so long that it really doesn’t feel that new at all. Lots of the underlying technology is an evolution of 4G LTE, which has been around for over a decade now. But the key thing about private 5G networks is that they are owned by you ‘the business’; not Verizon, Vodafone or Deutsche Telecom. With a public network if there is a problem with the capacity, connectivity or availability it’s out of your control. When you have your network under your own control, you can define how much resiliency you want to put into the design. You can tailor your network to the requirements of your applications, defining your own reliability, availability and capacity characteristics.”
—Esmat Mirzamany

  A company needs to think, what does this mean for our technology, and how can we avoid creating islands of digitalisation that will not talk to each other?”

—Juergen Broemmer, Director Global Strategic Services - DACH and Central Europe

What about the security of private 5G?

“The 5G that we implement on the public network is exactly the same thing that we implement on a private network. But private networks give you a chance to make it more secure. Because any wireless technology—be it Wi-Fi, 4G, 5G, anything—are subject to some attacks. What cellular connectivity provides is security from your SIM card to your server. It doesn’t offer control over your devices. It doesn’t have control over the applications you run on top. With a private network, you can integrate it with other solutions that Verizon, or other providers, offer to secure your applications, SIM cards and network.”
—Esmat Mirzamany

How much do leaders need to know about 5G to make good decisions?

“If a technology is successful, you shouldn’t need to know anything about it because it should be invisible. Unless customers are really techie and they want to know, I don’t think they need to know anything about C-Band or millimetre wave, etc. They might want to know the di erence between public and private, as that’s a key choice they are going to have to make. And they might want to know about network slicing; there’s a lot of misunderstanding about that and knowing what’s true, and what’s not, could be important. Of course, if you have a knowledgeable, trusted partner you can leave even that to them, they can help you make the right decisions based on your requirements.”
—Esmat Mirzamany

What differences are there between regions?

“Support from governments is very important for private 5G. There are quite a few incubator organisations—like Digital Catapult in the UK. These can help to bring the whole ecosystem together and get government funding and support and accelerate projects. But there are many countries where spectrum isn’t even available yet, though we expect many more to make it available in the next 6 – 12 months. The level of government support is reflected in the level of interest from companies, Germany out in front, with the UK, Japan and the US following.”
—Mehdi Quraishi

Does “on the ground” knowledge matter?

“If you are deploying in just one country, then it probably doesn’t make too much of a difference. The question is just, is the spectrum available for your own private use or not? It’s a different thing if you have sites across Europe and also in other regions. Then it can become very confusing and blurry, because, unfortunately, there are many different technical standards and regulatory frameworks.

In Germany, the regulator has a pretty clear scheme. In other countries, there may be something for you, but you don’t know exactly what it is and so you’re going to have to talk to the regulator. Other countries just haven’t made up their mind yet. So, if you have an international business, it probably helps to have a partner that’s familiar with dealing with regulators worldwide to help you make sense of this.”
—Juergen Broemmer

Is there a skills shortage?

“There’s always a skills shortage with anything new. One of the big hurdles can be what happens when the proof of concept is successful. How do you move into an operations environment? Some people talk about pilot purgatory, where things just remain in pilot stage forever. A company needs to think, ‘What are we trying to achieve over the next four or five to ten years?’ Then they can ask, ‘What does this mean for our technology stack and ecosystem, and how can we avoid creating islands of digitalisation that will not talk to each other?’ It’s critical to think about what new forms of data will be made available and how to turn that into something actionable. Data analysis and data management capabilities are going to be key.”
—Juergen Broemmer