Verizon’s slowly evolving private 5G business made a bit of progress this week as the carrier signed a deal with the Port of Virginia to replace a current Wi-Fi network with a tech-studded 5G-based private network.

The agreement calls for Verizon to deploy a private 5G network covering 270 acres at the Norfolk International Terminal in Norfolk, Virginia.

The new network will use Verizon’s “ultra-wideband” spectrum that entails its vast C-band and millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum. A Verizon spokesperson stated this deployment would largely rely on C-band spectrum and that they would be dedicated spectrum resources.

The network will exclusively use Ericsson equipment, including a standalone (SA), dual-mode 5G core and outdoor C-band radios. This is a good win for Ericsson, which has been overshadowed by Nordic rival Nokia in terms of private network leadership, but is starting to find success with equipment deals and its own packaged options.

The 5G SA nature of the network allows for advanced service functions like network slicing, but Verizon, which is still warming to 5G SA for its broader network, touted the capability for this private 5G deployment to support its push-to-talk (chirp-chirp) service.

The Norfolk International Terminal will hold title of the equipment, but Verizon is responsible for managing and maintaining the equipment.

The new agreement builds on past work between Verizon and the Port of Virginia.

Verizon last year was tapped to build a private network for Virginia International Terminal, which is near the Norfolk installment. That installation involved a non-standalone private network that combined 5G small cells with an LTE packet core and radios that could connect both 4G LTE and 5G devices. That deployment was also made under Verizon’s “On Site 5G” private network branding, with the new service more succinctly labeled “Verizon Private 5G Network.”

The latest Verizon deployment also aligns with recent private network use case expectations.

Christopher Antlitz, principal analyst at Technology Business Research, noted in a webinar this week that transportation and logistics makes up between 18% and 20% of current global private network deployments. This is just behind government and manufacturing verticals that each account for more than 20%.

ABI Research recently stated that more than 1,000 private networks have been deployed worldwide, but added that the number of announced networks has slowed, which is “a good sign for the private networks market.”

“Enterprises are beginning to see the deployment of private cellular connectivity as a competitive advantage and therefore do not want to talk about it too openly. Which is important as the market moves from the experimental phase toward commercializing private network deployments,” Leo Gergs, ABI Research senior analyst, recently wrote to SDxCentral, adding “the telco industry urgently needs to deliver on promises made to the enterprise community now. Otherwise, enterprise 5G will enter the history books as the technology that always overpromised and underdelivered.”

Verizon executives have touted slow-but-steady progress in its private network business.

CFO Tony Skiadas told an audience at this week’s Morgan Stanley European Technology, Media and Telecom Conference that private network customers “customers are very satisfied with the services they have, with the security, and the bandwidth and reliability of a private 5G network.”

CEO Hans Vestberg said during the carrier’s most recent earnings call that Verizon is seeing “demand for the product continue to grow, especially those solutions built with licensed spectrum, which provides a more secure and differentiated experience for the end users.”

“We also now have an ecosystem of products, infrastructure, modems, chips, phones and radios that can serve different use cases,” Vestberg said, adding, “that’s why we’re excited over it.”

Despite the growing optimism, Vestberg added that he does not expect private networks to start contributing “any significant revenues that have an impact on Verizon overall in 2024. We’re going to see that in 2025.”

“But why it’s important is that this is an area we’ve never been into,” Vestberg said. “This is a total new TAM [total addressable market] we can address by running private networks for different industries, for different large enterprises across the country.”

Analysys Mason predicts the private 5G market will grow at a 65% CAGR between 2021 and 2027, hitting 39,000 deployments at the end of that timeframe. That growth will be on the back of investments it predicts will grow from $1.5 billion in 2022 to $7.7 billion by 2027.