Federated Wireless is adding a neutral host option on top of its managed private wireless 5G service that allows enterprise customers a managed way to integrate cellular operators into their private network deployments. Conversely, it’s also another step in moving 5G-based operators closer to the potentially lucrative enterprise market.

Carl Temme, SVP of product for the new Neutral Host 2.0 platform at Federated Wireless, explained that the platform is targeted at enterprises and acts as a bridge between the vendors Private Wireless as a Service (PWaaS) product and operators looking to further integrate their 5G networks into the enterprise space. It uses shared infrastructure and shared Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum “to make it practical for those public carriers to provide service extension on top of our clients’ private wireless networks.”

“We have a turnkey approach that gives [enterprises] the ability to have a private data network and do lots of interesting things with that,” Temme said. “And this layers the public subscriber capability on top of that. This is really not a single purpose extension of public service, it's a network that's serving multiple purposes for our end clients, and then the public service providers can layer their service on top of that.”

Federated Wireless handles all of the logistics, deployment and management of the service. This includes sourcing the necessary hardware, using its as-a-service software platform, managing the shareable CBRS spectrum and working with the cellular operator to integrate their commercial offerings. Temme noted Federated Wireless has agreements with so-far unnamed tier-one mobile operators.

“We don't mind if the customer wants to go to the mobile network operator directly, but generally they don't have any interest in doing that and there's no real advantage to them doing it,” Temme said. “We've formed those relationships and we take care of all that for them as well. It’s generally outside their expertise and their staffing to do that, so we just take care of that.”

The new offering also cheekily takes a dig at legacy distributed antenna systems (DAS) that have been the legacy neutral-host systems of choice for venues and enterprises for decades. Temme said those systems have become more cumbersome to manage and maintain due to their analog nature.

The new platform also builds off of and runs on top of Federated Wireless’ Private Wireless-as-a-Service product it launched last year. That product takes advantage of Federated Wireless’ embedded partner ecosystem and experience managing CBRS spectrum to help simplify private network deployments for enterprises and industry verticals.

That platform, and outside deals with partners like Amazon Web Services (AWS), have allowed Federated Wireless to spearhead “multiple” 5G-based private network deployments, something that continues to be a surprisingly rare occurrence. Temme specifically cited work it has done with California Polytechnic State University.

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.

Outside of its 5G wins, Temme also touted Federated Wireless’ advantage in using the CBRS spectrum band that is central to most private network deployments. The company acts as one of only a handful of CBRS spectrum access system providers – alongside Google, Amdocs and Sony – that are tasked by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in managing access to that spectrum.

Federated Wireless was one of the first to market with a platform allowing for management of that spectrum band’s complex licensing model, which is built around maintaining interference protection for incumbent and priority access users.

CBRS spectrum is a swath of around 150 megahertz in the 3.5 GHz band that the federal government has set aside for licensed use. An organization can gain access to some of those bands for a limited geographic area using a licensing process managed by a couple of different programs.

Temme explained that Federated Wireless is currently the conduit for 48% of the CBRS spectrum used in the market, with that spectrum being used by more than 500 customers connecting more than 150,000 devices.

That advantage could be huge if the private network market continues to build toward expectations.

Analysys Mason predicts the private 5G market will grow at a 65% compound annual growth rate 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.