Ericsson said that manufacturing is currently the largest private 5G sector in the US.
92% of respondents to their latest enterprise report believe that 5G will help unlock business innovation, including AI and IoT
52% said that the cost of deployment was the largest obstacle to private 5G
Swedish telecom vendor Ericsson notes in its latest U.S. state of enterprise connectivity report that certain companies are already investing in 5G private networks for their mission-critical needs.
“Warehouses, logistics and manufacturing facilities are increasingly adopting private 5G to provide dedicated bandwidth for their most critical devices,” Ericsson said of U.S. enterprises. Ericsson surveyed over 1,000 respondents at the C-level and senior manager rank for the report.
This partially aligns with the latest report from SNS Telecom & IT, which concludes that manufacturing, military, healthcare and mining are the largest sectors that are deploying private cellular and private 5G in particular.
“Over the last 12 months, there has been a noticeable increase in production-grade deployments of private 5G networks by household names and industrial giants such as Airbus, Aker BP, Boliden, CIL (Coal India Limited), Equinor, Etihad, Ford, Hyundai, Jaguar Land Rover, John Deere, LG Electronics, Lufthansa, Newmont, POSCO, Tesla, Toyota, and Walmart, paving the way for Industry 4.0 and advanced application scenarios,” the SNS analysts noted in their latest report.
Ericsson said the data in its U.S. report suggests almost every organization (93%) believes more secure, reliable and high performing networks like 5G are important to the country’s position as a global technology leader. “Further, 92 percent believe a new era of connectivity will help unlock business innovation, including AI and IoT,” Ericsson writes in the report.
Among the largest barriers to adoption of those surveyed were the cost of deployment/maintenance of the network (52%) and the complexities associated with upgrading their hardware (46%). These barriers could prevent some enterprises from unlocking the full potential of the AI and IoT technologies in which they’ve made significant investments. In fact, 95% of businesses revealed that unreliable business connectivity leads to higher operational costs or operational inefficiencies.
Dell'Oro Group has previously said that the main global private network vendors are Huawei, Nokia and Ericsson.