Wireless

Ericsson lands private 5G CBRS network at Minneapolis airport

By Monica Alleven Sep 21, 2026 1:05pm

Ericsson deployed private 5G at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport using CBRS spectrum
The Swedish vendor worked with Insight Enterprises and the Metropolitan Airports Commission on the MSP deployment, which covers about five square miles
The network supports airport use cases where Wi-Fi wasn’t cutting it, including secure video transmission, connected vehicles and HD monitoring on airport trams

In some ways, airports are like miniature cities. They require their own public safety, maintenance, security and parking facilities.

That goes for their network, too. That’s why Ericsson used CBRS to provide a private 5G network at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP), providing enough fire power for secure video transmissions and enterprise-grade connectivity across the campus in both indoor and outdoor environments.

Of course, Ericsson didn’t do it alone. It worked with Insight Enterprises and the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) to deploy the network for the MSP airport, which covers about five square miles. Insight Enterprises is a systems integrator and MAC owns and operates MSP as well as six reliever airports in the Twin Cities area.

What did MSP airport want to do with private 5G?

In conversations with Bill Boyd, the director of infrastructure and operations for the MAC’s Information Technology department, it became clear that they wanted a network that was reliable and private 5G was the only option that would fit the bill, according to Pankaj Malhotra, head of Enterprise Networking and Security for Enterprise Wireless Solutions at Ericsson.

“I think in this case, it was about building a really secure digital platform for the airports of the future,” Malhotra told Fierce. “That’s how he put it when I last talked to him.”

The Ericsson Private 5G solution is what they call “click to deploy,” he said. For MSP, it includes dozens of connected airport vehicles equipped with Ericsson Cradlepoint routers that connect airport vehicles and provide MSP teams with access to operational applications across the airfield.

One of MSP’s early use cases includes the ability to support Axis Communications’ private cellular-enabled camera system, which includes HD video monitoring on airport trams.

Typically, customers want a private 5G network when predictable connectivity is paramount – and Wi-Fi doesn’t cut it. Areas such as manufacturing, warehouses, seaports and airports are where they’re seeing some of the most demand, he said.

“We do see a lot of interest in niche areas,” Malhotra said. “Obviously, if you look at private 5G, it's not an impulsive buy. You must have a really good use case to be able to justify why you require your own private network.”

Private 5G spans licensed, unlicensed

In the U.S., one of the most common ways for delivering private 5G is by using CBRS, which stands for Citizens Broadband Radio Service. It’s unique to the U.S. and consists of a three-pronged tiered shared spectrum system that protects incumbent Navy users.

At 3.5-3.7 GHz, it sits smack dab in the middle of the 3 GHz band, which is why some operators – namely AT&T – have lobbied for the federal government to move the CBRS band elsewhere in order to retain most of the 3 GHz band for full-power, licensed uses – the type that operators like AT&T prefer. Right now, that proposal appears to be at a standstill, although CBRS proponents stand ready to defend their turf.

The CBRS saga doesn’t end there. Ericsson rival Nokia was an early proponent of CBRS, but last year, Nokia signaled that, on a worldwide scale, it was contemplating the sale of its Enterprise Campus Edge unit, which mainly targets smaller campus-wide private networks. Nokia has said it remains committed to its larger mission-critical enterprise business that caters to more lucrative contracts in areas like defense, public safety and utilities.

In light of all these developments, Fierce wanted to know if Ericsson might be picking up some of the slack that Nokia is leaving on the table.

“Absolutely,” SNS Telecom 5G & Wireless Research Director Asad Khan told Fierce via email.

“We’re already seeing signs of this with Ericsson reporting new deals in segments that were previously dominated by Nokia, such as aviation, manufacturing, warehousing and several other verticals,” he said. “We're finding that Ericsson is working much more closely with system integrators like Future Technologies Venture, which has historically been a strong Nokia partner.”

Ericsson’s use of CBRS

Malhotra said he didn’t know off the top of his head how many CBRS networks Ericsson has deployed – it’s published reports about Lufthansa Cargo at LAX airport in Los Angeles and Toyota’s production complex in Columbus, Indiana, to name a couple.

But Khan said the vast majority of Ericsson's new private 5G deployments in the U.S. use CBRS spectrum.

At Ericsson’s own 5G smart factory in Lewisville, Texas, the company wrote in a 2021 case study about how it used CBRS to make its own operations more efficient, reliable, environmentally friendly and cutting edge.

However, during Fierce’s visit to the facility in June of this year, a manager at the facility noted that they were no longer using CBRS in the building. Why? Apparently they were able to get licensed spectrum from an unnamed mobile operator in the area (suspected but not confirmed to be AT&T) to supply connectivity.

After the tour, Fierce inquired about this and an Ericsson spokesperson confirmed they were no longer using CBRS in the factory but noted its inclusion in the 2021 case study.

“Since then, our connectivity strategy has evolved as we have scaled new use cases and evaluated the maturity of different device ecosystems leveraging the 5G C-band private network we implemented,” the spokesperson told Fierce.

Ericsson vs. Nokia in private 5G

In private 5G, Nokia currently accounts for about 28% and 22% of global private cellular RAN and core sales, respectively, according to SNS Telecom.

“Ericsson is not far behind and we expect the Swedish vendor to overtake Nokia within the next 12 months, albeit by a relatively small margin. We still expect Nokia to remain one of the top three suppliers globally and one of the top two outside China,” Khan said.

Worldwide, Huawei remains the leading private 5G vendor when China is included in the count.

Excluding China, the big ones are Nokia and Ericsson, he said.

Prospects for other vendors in private 5G

SNS Telecom expects a bevy of specialist RAN and core vendors to benefit from the shift that’s happening in private 5G – and the list is long: Celona, Airspan, Globalstar, Siemens, Sercomm, Moso Networks, Druid Software, RADTONICS, Pente, Ataya, GuardStack/Blackned, Cumucore, AttoCore, Saviah, HPE, Cisco, Star Solutions, Benetel, Askey, HFR, LG Electronics (a relatively new entrant) and “many others,” Khan said.

The contracts are significant – including multi-site deployments involving customers like Google (data centers), Nestlé, Cargill, BP, LyondellBasell, Marathon Petroleum and Celanese – and they're being awarded to startups and specialist private 5G vendors.

In the big scheme of things, 5G might have been a disappointment for a lot of folks in the wireless industry. But with private 5G, it appears that for a lot of vendors, they’re ready for take-off.