Verizon, NTT among service providers narrowing private 5G focus

While private 5G network hype hasn’t slowed down, service providers are starting to narrow their focus as some enterprise verticals are easier to enter than others.

For example, manufacturing is frequently touted as a use case for private 5G, but Omdia analysts have said manufacturing is historically slower to adopt new technology.

“The verticals where companies are getting momentum are not going to be the manufacturing process, the factory floor, but I always say ports is a great example because we see a lot of momentum across service providers, system integrators and vendors,” Omdia Principal Analyst Pablo Tomasi told Light Reading in a recent podcast. “That’s because the port environment is perfect for a private network… you have wide area coverage needs and a lot of moving things.”

Mining is another vertical where the industry has provided “actual results” in deploying private 5G networks, added Tomasi.

NTT focuses on transportation, manufacturing and logistics

Parm Sandhu (pictured above), VP of enterprise 5G products and services for NTT, told Light Reading at MWC 2023 that the service provider started with four focus areas for private 5G and narrowed it down to three verticals. NTT is now focusing on automotive, industrial/manufacturing and transportation logistics/ports. It’s removing healthcare from the mix for the time being.

NTT has been partnering with Cisco, which Sandhu said “brings the underlying private 5G technology,” to deliver private 5G networks as a managed service to its customers.

“We’re seeing automotive definitely run very fast because these are companies that every few years do major network transformations and need to continually invest in their plants and modernize manufacturing,” Sandhu told Light Reading at MWC. He added that NTT has seen “a huge pop up in activity” for private networks in the industrial/manufacturing/biopharmaceuticals sector over the last few months.

Sandhu said the company has put a pause on private network deployments for healthcare use cases, but it is running a few pilots with healthcare organizations.

Healthcare “use cases are more complicated. We have three healthcare pilots going on right now and we’re going to see how they go,” he said. “It’s an area that we thought ‘let’s investigate’ but don’t put a lot of sales effort into it.”

“We definitely think there’s a need for connectivity in hospitals, which is why we’re trying to do a couple of pilots,” he added.

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