12. It’s Time For Private 5G In the Enterprise – Tech Field Day Podcast

There's another wireless technology on the horizon, private 5G. Everyone's excited about it, but is it really right for your enterprise? In this episode of the Tech Field Day podcast, it's time for private 5G to move into the enterprise.

Welcome To the Tech Field Day podcast, where we bring together a group of IT technical experts to discuss a single idea about key concepts in the industry. This podcast features a variety of perspectives from members of the tech field, a delegate community, and is often recorded in association with one of our events. Tech Field a is a part of the Future Room group.

On this episode, which we're recording before HPE Discover, we're gonna introduce our premise in just a minute after I introduce our guests, starting with Sean. Hello, Sean Neil. I am a, uh, director of engineering services for a a var, um, and, uh, have been part of this, uh, tech Field day community for a number of years, and just looking forward to, uh, another podcast.

Alright, thanks Sean. And Mark? Hi, I am Mark s um, I'm a network engineer for a bunch of school districts up here in Utah.

Um, on the side, I, I blog and write things, um, but I'm heavily in the wifi side as well as the private cellular side. Um, I have a pretty healthy private cellular network that we've been building for about four or five years now. And yeah, that's kind of who I am.

And I'm Tom Hollingsworth. I'm the event lead for Tech Field Day focusing on mobility and wireless technologies. Let's jump into the premise for today's episode.

As I mentioned, we're recording this ahead of HPE Discover, which is taking place the third week of June in 2024. And one of the exciting things is this integration that we've seen between HPE Aruba Networking and HPE proper. And one of the big acquisitions that happened last year was the purchase of ANet, which is a private 5G company that has been doing a lot of deployments and it really has bolstered the connectivity options at the intelligent edge that HP Aruba networking has to offer.

But there's been some delay in getting private 5G into the enterprise. So in this podcast, we'd like to debate the premise that it's time for private 5G to move into the enterprise. Now, I want us take a moment to kind of discuss this acquisition by HPE Aruba Networking of ANet, because there was, you know, there was a little bit of a discussion in the community around picking them up because I know that they had partnered with some companies in the past and there was, you know, questions about what bringing it in-house would actually mean.

And even in that year, we've seen some moves and changes and even some announcements here recently about the service that they're gonna be offering. So I was wondering if I could toss this out to you guys. Maybe you could give us a little bit of background detail on why HP Aruba Networking wanted to pick up Athe net.

Yeah, absolutely. I, you know, know, I think, um, one, I, you know, as we look at what's going on out in, I think out, out in the wireless space and, and, uh, you know, the sort of the struggle for Spectrum that exists, I think, um, you know, where a lot of this private 5G started was, you know, finding a way to gain additional spectrum. You know, a lot of this process started before, uh, the six gigahertz spectrum was really ready or even made available.

So, um, you know, a piece of that I think, um, has maybe been alleviated somewhat, right? Um, but we're always looking for more spectrum for more different devices. Um, and I think it kind of started in sort of some, some niche use cases, you know, um, where sort of critical low latency networking needed to be in its own space.

Yeah, exactly. Um, ultimately private 5G Private LT is where this started. Um, it's been around for a long time and enterprises have been able to purchase Spectrum, been able to stand up their own LTE networks for years.

But what really changed is the release of Spectrum, as you talked about, Sean, the CBRS band specifically here in the United States, that has kind of helped push this along to where it's a more of a viable network that anybody can, anybody can stand up and network and build and, um, one of these networks to provide C coverage. Um, one of the issues we are running into, um, is use cases. And so there's been a lot of people exploring that.

And at this point with the, um, ANet acquisition, HP must, I is, um, must be seeing that there's some use cases out there that make this worth it and, um, are pursuing those, those use cases. I wanna talk about that for just a minute because one of the things that has always kind of been a contention point is this idea that what do I need to have a private 5G network to cover that I can't already cover with wifi? Because I mean, let's be fair, wifi is a pretty mature technology at this point when you think about it.

Um, granted we're always doing these leaps of, of technology innovation with six gigahertz and now with, you know, wifi seven or around the corner. But what is it about the CBRS private 5G private LTE, um, radio makeup that makes it more suited for certain environments? What are the kinds of places that you would expect to see this deployed over wifi?

John Deere, um, a couple weeks ago had a press release or some, some release where they actually said that wifi is legacy. I don't agree with that. I know a lot of people that listen to this podcast are gonna pull out their pitchforks and kind of disagree with that.

Leg wifi is not going away. There's been this kind of 5G is gonna take over wifi world that's not happening. They're, they're complimentary.

Where, where cellular works is largely where we're finding is in a lot of the uncared spaces manufacturing outdoors in large areas where pri providing wifi aps at the low, low level power levels that they provide are difficult to install. You have to have a lot of them in an area private 5G can cover larger distances because of the higher power rates and how the technology is built. It's built to go distances versus wifi is more of a a a, um, within a room or a couple rooms area, private 5G and five and LTE really excels in ex in reaching those larger areas.

Yeah, and you know, we kind of mentioned the opener too. I think, um, some of the areas where we were seeing it were those use cases where I'd say, you know, when we think about like traditional wifi, a lot of times it's a, a lot of times we end up building for environments or a sort of a series of compromises, right? Because you're trading off like max performance versus lowest com common denominator device, right?

And, and sort of having to sort of hash that out, right? And I think there's a lot of, um, some of these use cases that first started coming up with a private 5G would be like manufacturing and robots for instance, right? That are very, very sensitive to latency.

You know, human safety could be an issue if there's a disruption. Um, and so, you know, the other piece that we're getting in this, the private 5G, is we're getting a lot of, uh, a lot of the controls that we, um, that are available, um, in the sort of the carrier world and have started to make it with, uh, you know, the newer versions of wifi, you know, but haven't fully been realized in that, in the wifi space yet, even though the standards are now starting to support that stuff, um, it hasn't been fully adopted. And I think some of that is because of, you know, trade-offs that we have to make.

And, and so where we saw this start was the, where these purpose-built networks for, you know, one or two very, you know, initial use cases. But I do think, I, I do think companies have heartburn over that, right? It is a separate wireless network for one use case and that that can be a hard sell.

So we've, we've obviously talked about why it's important to use a private 5G network over wifi, where the advantages are and things like that. But let's turn that script on the other side of it. Why would I want to use a private 5G or CBRS network as opposed to just using what is there available today through any one of a number of providers?

What advantages do I get for using CBRS over at t Verizon, T-Mobile, et cetera, If you have requirements for control of data, um, that's where we're finding a lot of interest in using a private cellular network. If you want full end-to-end control of your network, private 5G is the only way to go. Um, if you have data requirements, federal government or different things like that, they do not want data out on pre on public clouds.

They want to keep it within the public cloud or thing, or within their public private network. Um, that is where a lot of this, um, expectation of security is being used, private cellulars being used to provide security in those situations. Yeah, I, I think to add on to that Mark, I would say, you know, um, with the private 5G sims and things too, right?

So not only is it sort of a little hardware component that could be in your phone, right? Or, or an EIM as we've seen, right? Some, there's some eims out there, um, that, uh, you know, but being able to have those types of connections and not necessarily have to pay a public provider, right?

I mean, you're gonna have have it in-house and if that's all you need, that's an option now, right? And, and you don't, they don't have to carry a full carrier line that could be taken out of facility and, and be serviceable. Additionally, um, a lot of the carrier networks, they are, they don't penetrate buildings the greatest, um, private solar uses what's called small cell technology.

And so more on the wi more on the wifi side. So indoors, there's some locations that are looking at it to provide coverage to their users in locations where wifi is not possible, but indoors in situations like that. So That makes sense when you think about it, because a lot of companies are trying to look at alternatives for that because while companies have a large workforce that are using cell phones, they, they still have to have other connectivity options.

Uh, I I still remember a time when we were hoping to hop on the A TT wifi network because 3G was completely overloaded with people and iPhones when they first came out. But I wanna go back to this idea of the Uncared enterprise because I think a lot of people have this perception, if you will, that the enterprise is a very clean office with rows of cubicles and drop ceilings and fluorescent lights, and we'll just put, you know, a few aps around here, wherever the coverage map says I need to put 'em, and that takes care of that. But as you've kind of talked about, it's hard to do that in a manufacturing floor or in a stadium or in a place where the, the lines are not as clean.

What is it about an uncared enterprise other than the power levels, which we've already talked about that is just not, not conducive to using wifi technologies? Yeah, we, we did, we did talk about the use cases. Um, um, and Mark did talk about some of the distance, you know, sort of the distance requirements and, and things that come into play.

Um, I mentioned lightly on about some of the controls. I think, um, you know, those are those that really are a big piece of it. The, the latency controls, the controls over signaling and which device can talk and when, and, and, you know, better, better controls over quality of service for certain types of applications, right?

I think some of that, uh, doesn't exist or isn't quite, uh, where it is implemented. The controls aren't as good as, uh, what we have in, uh, the, the private wifi or private 5G uh, realm. Um, so I think, you know, sort of dialing in the support for those specific applications, um, I I feel is, you know, definitely one of the areas that it can shine Private, private 5G is more AP controlled.

Wifi is absolutely controlled by the client. Um, clients choose when to talk. They have the back off timer getting super technical here, but you have a back off timer where a client will try to talk, if they hear collisions, they will back off and wait.

Private 5G and LT technologies were, are built off, built differently in that regard. They, the radio, um, breaks up the spectrum into chunks and says, okay, this is your chunk talk here. And that is how, that is how it, um, we achieve a lot of that latency is we are able to dedicate resources, resource units in the, in, um, the techno in is the technical term, but we're able to dedicate resources to individual radios and that device is allowed to talk.

So we're able to prioritize certain traffic over other traffic in a much more efficient manner than wifi is able to do now. And so that provides a lot of efficiencies for these robots, um, these manufacturing plants and these locations where those are paramount, that we need that latency. We need the data to arrive on time at the expected moment.

Um, that is private 5G and private LTE provide that right now, whereas wifi is promised, but it's, it's never fully been delivered because of how the technologies are built. So I wanna talk for a moment, dollars and cents, because unfortunately all of the technological solutions in the world, no matter how pristine and great they can be, are eventually going to come up against a blocker. In most cases, it's the investment cost to deploy them.

And I know that a lot of companies look at wifi as just kind of an additive cost thing. Oh, don't worry about that. We'll just order a few more aps and you guys can figure out where to put them and it'll cover everything.

But I feel like private 5G requires a little bit more investment. What kinds of numbers are we looking at roughly, and is it something that companies can budget for without an obscene amount of uplift in order to get to a point where they can provide way better coverage for a reasonable amount of money? Hmm.

I think today, today it's fairly comparable. I, I think you're looking at the average footprint of a private LT style, I'll call it an access point or radio, um, tends to have, it has, it tends to have a larger footprint than your standard, uh, wifi coverage would have. Um, but the price is higher, so it, like, that tends to be, you know, maybe a little bit of a wash there in terms of, um, and cost.

And then the backend is, is somewhat similar. Uh, it does feel like a lot of enterprises are basically installing two, two full enterprise wireless networks today. One for the traditional wifi use cases and another for the private, you know, LTE use cases.

And, uh, boy, would it be nice to see those two converge into one sort of dashboard, one backend management plane, those types of things, you know, because those are a lot of things that are different today. Um, and having two of them, you know, is more management overhead is more support, there's more everything That is, that is one of the hopes of this HP Aruba acquisition. Now, HP or not ar, Aruba, ANet, AR HPE ANet acquisition is, um, that we can start to bring these technologies together in, into one system instead of having multiple systems, multiple networks.

Um, hopefully someday we will get there. So going back to the original question, um, with, with pricing, um, indoors, you're installing these about four radios per wifi, four wifi aps per private cellular radio, Fortis, Fortis eight, somewhere in there, depending upon the space outdoors, your costs skyrocket. When you're trying to install wifi in these locations, you're having to run fiber, um, you're having to mount ra wifi radios in locations because there is that lower power with private 5G, you stick up with single radio and suddenly you're covering the area of 20, 40, 50 aps with one radio.

And so the outdoor cost absolutely com you, they are more expensive to get an outdoor radio, but at the end of the day, you're covering, you're spending less on equipment, less overhead, less other things than just the radio because it's this, you're only putting out a couple, one or two radios. Yeah, I, in the space, you're talking about the outdoor space, right? I mean, a lot of the cost is getting that radio to where I want it to be physically to support wifi, right?

So like, especially you look at some interesting use cases like, uh, how harbors work or train yards or some of those that are like outdoor large industrial spaces. Wifi is very difficult and mesh is very difficult, right? And so I think this is a place that there are some really interesting use cases, right?

And, and, uh, again, in those, um, you know, some of the targets are moving targets, right? They are, uh, vehicles that pick up a train car off of a semi-truck and then move it to, you know, to be loaded onto a ship, right? Like those, that's a large space.

I mean, many, many football fields worth of space that need coverage and, and, uh, wifi just can't do, do that today. It als it also comes down to, um, I'm gonna say a word that's different in which technology you're talking about, but roaming in the wifi world, roaming is moving between AP to ap. In cellular world it means something different.

It means moving from carrier to carrier. It's, it's called handoff in the, in the cellular world. But on wifi, that handoff introduces a lot of latency in the cellular world, because we are have larger cells, these net, these coverage areas are much larger.

That handoff is a lot more efficient as well as the technologies built hand a lot more efficiently than wifi. And so as you're moving from in the warehouse to out to the dock, to the ship, you're moving, you could be potentially moving from private cellular network to private cellular network, but that handoff is seamless. The data drops.

Um, at WLPC this last year, your drop data is very, it's at most one or two packets at most, most of the time it's actually even less than, it's none. It's just an a quick drop off. Whereas wifi, they have to suddenly drop, go search for a new ap, and there's, there can be several drop packets, whereas with private cellular, that is just handled by the core.

It says, K, move over to here to this other radio, DO your signal's better over here, move there and it moves and it's, and it's all, it's all controlled. That does sound like something a lot of people may want in their network. But as we sit here in summer of 2024, uh, it's important to make sure, sure that we're asking the right questions if we're faced with a technology refresh or a special project that requires us to do that.

So if you are talking to a client who's saying that maybe they need to, uh, investigate this, what is one question that they need to ask of their providers or their suppliers to make sure that private 5G is the right fit for what they're trying to accomplish? What, what's the use cases at the end of the day? What use case are you trying to solve?

What is the struggle with wifi? I've looked at some where there was problems with wifi. We were able to fix the wifi and actually fix the issue, and we didn't need to go private cellular.

But at the same time, there's a locations where wifi struggles, private, cellular exceeds. And so it really comes down to use case. What is your use case?

What are you trying to accomplish? Does it fit certain criteria, um, that private cellular helps with versus wifi? Um, maybe wifi may be better, but at the end of the day, it comes down to use cases.

Yeah, I, I think it's also a little confusing for, for a lot of the, you know, the companies are cons trying to consume this or at least hear about and are interested in learning more because there's also, you know, sort of what it isn't, right? And, and I think when people think of private cellular, one of the things that immediately comes to mind is the great, I don't need a DA anymore, right? I don't need, and like every, everybody always asks, well, can we just put our cell phones on this?

Can my, you know, I, I live here, I live here in Las Vegas where these conferences are, you know, can, can this, you know, private 5G solution replace at and t and Verizon or T-Mobile in these buildings? And the answer is no, currently, right? Like, I think, uh, ha you know, there's been a lot of tries in that space, uh, as well.

And that it's, it'd be an interesting evolution to see if it becomes a little more ubiquitous in terms of roaming from a wifi to a private 5G to a true cellular network and somewhere in the middle. You know, I, I know that's what people would want. Um, we're definitely not there.

Well, as you can see from this conversation, the private 5G technology is ready for the enterprise today, but only if you have the right use case for it. Wifi is a mature technology and it is ubiquitous in its deployment from a client device perspective. But not all devices are wifi devices.

Some things need to have a little bit more reliability or need to have more assurance. Some things need to be covered that are not your typical cubicle row. It could be a port, it could be a stadium, it could be a warehouse.

Whatever the case may be. You need to make sure that you are asking the right questions of your providers and providing them with all the information about your use case. Don't just deploy this technology 'cause it looks cool.

You need to make sure you're making the right decision for your environment so that you can be sure that private 5G is ready for your enterprise. That'll do it for this episode of the Tech Field Day podcast. I want to thank our guests for joining us.

I also want to thank our listeners for tuning in. com slash podcast. You can subscribe to us in your favorite pod catcher, just look for the Tech Field Day podcast and you can find us on Spotify.

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