Ericsson remains cautious on the near-term uptake of private networks, but it does have a trio of products that tap into 5G technology and different management levels that shows a readiness to strike what is expected to be a multi-billion-dollar opportunity.

Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm recently told investors that the vendor was “starting to see some very interesting use cases for our dedicated networks in manufacturing,” but added that “I would still say that’s a rather early market and not particularly big yet.”

Matt Addicks, who heads up private cellular marketing and strategy for Ericsson’s Cradlepoint division, explained to SDxCentral in an interview that Ericsson’s current private network approach is baked into a trio of offerings. These include its NetCloud Private Networks, Ericsson Private 5G service and a mission critical-focused offering.

While that might be viewed as a lot of options for a market that is “not particularly big yet,” as Ekholm said, Addicks noted each offering serves a specific and unique market.

“I think that historically, solutions have been challenging for an Enterprise to figure out, how to even approach it,” Addicks said. “Say they bought into the technology. It might be very difficult for them based off of the resources they have internally — and I would say the cellular maturity they have internally — to be able to stand up a private network. Where solutions are today and, specifically, Ericsson solutions are today, is really simplifying that whole process end to end.”

Addicks noted there was also a difference in what department within an Enterprise is coming to Ericsson for a private network platform.

“There's the [operational technology] buyer, and then there's also what we're seeing emerge as the [information technology] buyer,” Addicks said.

He explained that the OT buyer typically comes from a large manufacturing facility, a utility company or the energy space. The IT buyer can be from those same environments but is more often coming from the non-industrial space.

“Think about the smart city–type applications, warehouse and logistics, hospitality, large venues, airports and that kind of stuff,” Addicks said.

As noted, Ericsson currently has a three-pronged attack in tackling those markets … and buyers.

Addicks said Ericsson’s NetCloud Private Networks offering is the vendor’s most hands-on platform, providing a high level of management to an Enterprise that lacks the resources to oversee a wireless network. This is targeted at the IT buyer who is “kind of hamstrung from a resource perspective.”

“They might have lean IT resources and are very used to deploying and managing Wi-Fi networks, and just yesterday they could have been troubleshooting a voice-over-IP system or a printer and then today they are troubleshooting a wireless network,” Addicks said. “They need a more reliable connectivity source for their business-critical applications, but the legacy cellular options are too daunting and complex for them to piecemeal together.”

Ericsson unveiled the NetCloud Private Networks platform earlier this year, and has since bolstered its capabilities. These include security and edge updates that allow the system to have security services edge (SSE) and secure access service edge (SASE) support.

Enterprises with more “resource” depth or the Enterprise OT buyer can take advantage of Ericsson’s Private 5G, which is a prepackaged service with different consumption levels based on need.

“A great example of this is from a radio perspective,” Addicks said. “The coverage and capacity that it can support based off of the radio architecture is incrementally stronger than that of the NetCloud solution.”

Ericsson recently updated this platform with improved visibility, management and coverage capabilities.

These two platforms provide the broadest reach for Ericsson, something that analysts view as an advantage for the vendor.

“One size does not fit all, and the various routes to a private LTE and 5G deployment have the potential to confuse customer organizations of all sizes,” Will Townsend, senior analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, noted in a recent blog post. “But thanks to Ericsson Private 5G and Cradlepoint NetCloud Private Networks, Ericsson is able to offer tailored solutions from one of the industry’s broadest private cellular networking portfolios.”

Ericsson’s third approach is its mission-critical service that operates as a different unit within Ericsson. Addicks described this as “essentially equivalent to the larger macro networks.”

“It's built for a nationwide, countrywide-type deployment,” Addicks said. “Alongside entire rail systems or very large industrial-owned utilities. That kind of stuff is what mission critical is built for. It's really a tailored solution or bespoke solution that is custom built for that end user, for very large mission-critical deployments.”

This angle is similar to rival Nokia’s recently launched Core Enterprise Solutions products, with both targeting significant market opportunities.

SNS Telecom and IT predicts annual investments in public safety 4G LTE and 5G infrastructure will grow at a 13% Compound Annual Growth Rate between 2022 and 2025, hitting more than $2.3 billion by the end of 2025.

All three of Ericsson’s private network offerings are underpinned by Ericsson’s Wireless Local Area Network products that include its edge devices, endpoints and ecosystem partners. These include channel partners, managed service providers, value-added resellers, system integrators and technology alliances.

Ericsson is also one of the world’s largest 5G technology vendors, though Addicks noted 5G connectivity remains an outside option for current private network deployments.

“It really is use-case dependent,” Addicks said. “A lot of folks see the marketing and the hype around 5G — and there’s a great opportunity there — but every use case doesn’t require it. I see typically a mix of interest across 4G LTE and 5G in certain areas of an environment based on the requirements purely from a use case perspective.”

Alex Wang, sales manager for private networks at Ericsson, did add that Ericsson’s offerings do support both 4G LTE and 5G in the same product, with usage dependent on need.

Others have noted a similar technology optionality.

Michael Davies, VP of business partner strategy and 5G-as-a-service at Betacom, recently told SDxCentral that while the vendor is offering a 5G-based private wireless product to enterprises, most of their deployments have used 4G LTE radios.

“We’ll begin seeing traction in the second half of this year, probably into 2024,” Davies explained, though he did add that 5G won’t be the dominant private network transmission technology until 2030. “It’s certainly going to be an LTE story for the rest of the decade.”

That timing was echoed by Douglas Bellin, global lead of business development for Smart Factories and Industry 4.0 at Amazon Web Services (AWS), during an interview at Amazon’s re:Invent show late last year.

Bellin explained that the average machine age across manufacturing globally is 25 years old, which means there is not a lot of equipment that can communicate with a 5G radio. For wireless technologies, the age of these devices aligns with when Wi-Fi was still new and the cellular industry was deep in its 2G technology phase.

Addicks did note that the device ecosystem was “definitely continuing to evolve and continuing to grow,” but that the private network market remains a key driver for the broader Enterprise digital transformation evolution, and thus Ericsson’s broad focus.

“I think it's important for the whole industry not to sleep on what the end Enterprise is going to really see from a day-to-day basis in the output of the network,” Addicks said. “The private wireless network itself is the foundation for the digital transformation, the output is going to come from a lot of the software applications that are driving business decisions or improving efficiencies.”