Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been the talk of the town for the past year, but it’s not the only technology transforming the economy. From manufacturing and logistics to smart cities, industries are looking for higher bandwidth, lower latency, and faster processing to support a host of advanced applications, including AI. To reach these goals, they are turning to Private 5G (P5G) networks.
Enabling the Edge and AI
Supported by features introduced in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 16 in 2020, P5G is not merely a network; it’s an enabler. Enterprises with P5G networks can provide and manage coverage across buildings and campuses, while bypassing public network congestion, which helps ensure low latency, high speeds, and tightened security. But paired with other technologies, it can do much more.
Consider P5G and edge compute. Distributed computing has been around for a few decades, but today’s edge leverages recent elements, such as cloud processing, edge-optimized applications, and devices that collect, assess, and distribute data from IoT sensors. Adding 5G connectivity can be transformative. In an international survey of 621 current enterprise investors in edge solutions spanning five major industries, 88 percent said that 5G was an important enabler. Those who used P5G reported the highest benefits.
What kind of benefits? Take manufacturing, where P5G deployments are surging. Today’s factories are embracing cloud, machine learning, AI, and automation technologies. Since a significant amount of data is created by connected devices, it has become a major challenge to extract, aggregate and leverage actionable information in a scalable way. Processing data locally removes the stress on backhaul. A P5G network gives a manufacturer coverage, reliability, and fast response time. How it enhances AI deserves a closer look.
Generative (Gen) AI, the most popular new technology in 2023, consumes a tremendous amount of compute power over deep neural networks. By itself, 5G can speed up response times and data processing through its low latency and edge support. In addition, a P5G network can boost data rates, reliability, scalability, security, privacy, and control. In so doing, it enhances the performance of emerging Gen AI apps, which organizations are beginning to deploy to drive better business outcomes.
P5G Value Propositions
No successful standard stands still. In the coming year, the mobile world will turn its attention to 5G-Advanced, as a step toward 6G. With better support for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), IoT devices, fixed-wireless access, and more, these evolving standards are setting the stage for new use cases. But there are plenty of legs left in 5G, and P5G especially.
A few challenges remain for 5G, from spectrum availability to supply-chain movement to the device ecosystem itself – all opportunities to collaborate and innovate as an industry. With P5G, however, our experience has been that this 5G variant not only promises to support emerging technologies, but has already driven tremendous value across a range of scenarios:
- Connected Smart Cities. P5G network coverage is helping bridge digital divides and improve remote-learnings connectivity, as well as create smart-city solutions with automated capabilities involving telehealth, government services, safety, and business formation.
- Smart Manufacturing. In addition to the generic example above, manufacturers are deploying P5G networks in LAN and IoT configurations to drive analytics for sustainability and energy efficiency, regulatory compliance, and test beds, including use cases on production network.
- Smart Mining. A P5G network that supports remote-management and maintenance activities and high-speed wireless networking at mining production sites also delivers enhanced security, high-tech performance, and coverage to enable IoT devices.
- Smart Venues. P5G networks are giving fans real-time race data and turning large public spaces into smart venues, providing access to real-time information and predictive analytics on crowd size, wait times, traffic congestion, etc.
- Smart Airports. P5G networks are being built to monitor the location of people and devices in airports, including luggage, and offer intelligent services for the logistics hubs and facilitate the usage of autonomous robots for security.
Trending Toward P5G
Enterprises are becoming increasingly distributed; factories are growing more dependent on robotics; the number of mobile and wireless devices on the network continues to increase; the need for localized compute processing power is expanding by leaps and bounds. These and related trends are driving the need for reliable, secure, fast, and responsive connectivity. Exactly what P5G guarantees.
As P5G is deployed even more widely, it will become a new standard of excellence. Somewhat like fiber-to-the-home, except without the hassle of fiber and with no dumb-pipe connotations. In other words, massive and reliable throughput, but easy-to-deploy and with a rich bundle of features that are conducive to enterprise innovation and value creation.
