Want to know why private 5G is now viable in SA?

5G for cellular networks has seen a lot of interest in Africa, particularly now as the Open RAN model gains traction.

Uptake of private 5G, however, has been relatively limited to fewer, more highly scaled and complex business cases. Now that’s changing because of some simple yet interesting developments.

Private 5G is different from 5G for cellular networks. Marketers and media have invested in getting the message out that private 5G revolutionises integrated end-to-end company networks for a range of fourth industrial revolution applications.

Technically, that’s true. Adoption in South Africa, however, has been extremely limited in the enterprise space and other scenarios. Typical use cases include utilities, high-tech manufacturing, retail, wholesale and agritech, as well as the energy and resources sector. Several factors have, however, limited deployments in these sectors in Africa.

One of the major changes that has now occurred to improve 5G as a feasible solution to enterprise requirements is the sharply reduced cost, thereby creating compelling use cases. LTE was previously touted as a WiFi-cellular crossover technology. LTE never really took off with converged WiFi though, because of the different capabilities of the cellular and WiFi technologies. There was limited scope to converge the two, it was complex and costly.

As opposed to Open RAN 5G, proprietary 5G wasn’t cost-effective for any but the most demanding networks, typically carrier environments.

5G in Open RAN deployments, however, cost-effectively overcomes those technical limitations related to LTE.

Open RAN was formed by a group of global technology giants, including NEC, which created an open standard for 5G and other related technologies to integrate and work together.

The result is that users can have a diversified supplier ecosystem, which was never possible before.

That delivers numerous benefits, such as lower costs, exponentially more potential to innovate, flexibility to design and tailor the network to the business case, agility and scalability, among others.

As opposed to Open RAN 5G, proprietary 5G wasn’t cost-effective for any but the most demanding networks, typically carrier environments.

Even so, limited spectrum availability has made deployment challenging. Proprietary technology also locks customers into proprietary stacks with price tags that suit the supplier.

Now that’s all changed.

Better availability of spectrum in South Africa and access to cost-effective technologies created viable business cases for a much larger swathe of customers.

Now, medium to large businesses, particularly those with branch environments, have a strong returns-based case for deploying 5G in Open RAN models.

Government’s movement around spectrum release is particularly promising. Not least because it helps carriers explore 5G cellular deployments, which invigorates markets.

It also motivates bring your own 5G device, early adoption of which will predominate among enterprise workers. Dynamic spectrum allocation and the frequency modulation capabilities of the emerging WiFi technologies also create an exceptionally optimistic landscape.

Nonetheless, the cost-effectiveness of private 5G based on the Open RAN standard offers to reduce telecommunication costs through what’s called intra-calling.

It’s when you make a cellular call that only traverses the private company network, never switching to the cellular service provider network, and therefore never incurring cellular costs.

If you have two branches, each in separate cities, with your own network linking the two, this is how you will make calls in the future. The same principle applies to all devices that communicate across service provider networks.

You can ship a high quality, high volume, high throughput signal across your own 5G network, more cost-effectively when you use Open RAN-based solutions.

While the first and most obvious benefit is the cost of calls, the second benefit is perhaps more compelling. Using 5G for mobile communications is highly secure, much more secure than switching out the public service provider networks and much more secure than current networking solutions.

No device is allowed to connect to a 5G network if it is not already registered on the network. That cuts out man-in-middle hackers, a lot of malware and a great deal of corporate espionage.

5G’s high speeds, high volumes and high throughput make this technically viable for the peak demands of voice, video and even more demanding applications.

One of the biggest hurdles most companies will encounter is finding the right partner to deploy, run and maintain the network with them.

5G is complex and integration challenges due to low skills availability are significant.

The main path to 5G adoption, particularly in developing markets such as South Africa, where we have some specific challenges, not least being the skills shortage, is to work with systems integrators, particularly those with proven track records in the carrier space.

They’re accustomed to carrier-grade deployments and have the right expertise for smooth deployments.

Four of the top pros and cons are:

• Systems integrators can tailor deployments to the business case.

• Experienced partners work directly with vendors and sometimes carriers for end-to-end, single PO solutions.

• Systems integrators are accustomed to serving the enterprise market and understand the business functions.

• Interoperability of the network elements is vital.

OEMs don’t necessarily have the consulting skills, particularly in South Africa where they predominantly rely on partners. Some excellent consulting firms design highly effective solutions but don’t necessarily retain the deployment and operational resources.

When you look to the future, Open RAN is a key standard since it incorporates the start-up environment, which is where all future innovation will originate. That’s critical to competitive differentiation but the consulting firms may not have many programmes or support the solutions that cater for this important shift.

5G in Open RAN deployments is changing the enterprise, corporate and public networking game. It ushers in a plethora of benefits for compelling business cases and opportunities to leverage advantage.