Cisco continues to plant seeds for a growing role in wireless network infrastructure by helping operators reach new markets that conjoin enterprise IT and cellular systems.

The enterprise IT and networking juggernaut this week shared more details about Cisco Private 5G, including customer trials underway with Airspan and JMA Wireless.

The private 5G offering integrates with existing enterprise systems and WiFi, operates as-a-service on a pay-per-use basis, and supports open RAN principles, which helped it land a deal with the aspiring greenfield open RAN operator Dish Wireless for private enterprise networks. 

The white-label service allows operators and IT vendors to design, integrate, and deploy private networks with an initial focus on manufacturing, warehouse logistics, hospitality, energy and utilities, mining, and education. 

“Cisco is busting the myth that enterprises can’t cross WiFi, private 5G, and IoT streams. Enterprises are now tantalizingly closer to full visibility over their digital and physical environments. This opens up powerful new ways to innovate without compromising the robust control that enterprises require,” Camille Mendler, chief analyst at Omdia, said in a prepared statement.

Carriers play central role in Cisco Private 5G

Cisco is working with multiple carriers around the world and building the offering around licensed cellular spectrum. 

“Private networks for cellular spectrum is not new,” Jonathan Davidson, EVP and GM of Cisco’s Mass-Scale Infrastructure Group, said during an interview hosted by Raymond James that was broadcast from MWC Barcelona 2022. 

About 400 private 4G LTE networks exist today. “However, we certainly expect to have significantly more than that in the 5G world because of the time it would take them to build the infrastructure necessary to offer this as a cloud-based service,” he added. “We think that in conjunction with the additional capacity or also the need for high value asset tracking is really important.”

The market for private networks that connect to cellular infrastructure is young, but Cisco remains confident a more simplified deployment model that allows wireless carriers and IT vendors to offer this as-a-service will help push private networks to the next level. 

“[Carriers] have the spectrum necessary, they have the ability to do the on-premise radio frequency management, and now we’re giving them the ability to, in a very simple way, offer a net new service to their customers that they have not been able to offer before,” Davidson said.

Manufacturing facilities that have to reconfigure every few days to run a different set of mass product customization are one of many targets, he explained. "Doing that when everything is fixed, not only fixed in place but their connectivity is fixed, makes things significantly more challenging."

Cisco also updated its IoT Control Center, which manages nearly 200 million devices globally today, in a bid to simplify how operators manage and control IoT devices spanning multiple connectivity architectures and network requirements based on functions.

The single, subscription-based platform also introduces massive IoT capabilities, laying the foundation for operators to sell more IoT connections to enterprises that use lower cost and less complex devices and sensors. Cisco Private 5G is also integrated with IoT Control Center.