With the commercial use of 5G, the rapidly growing communications industry has begun to be deeply integrated with Industry 4.0, which brings about the intelligent era. In this process, a convenient, efficient and fast-deployed 5G private network becomes the key driving force for intelligent empowerment.
Setting Policies for 5G Private Network
Industry 4.0 and intelligent manufacturing are the cornerstones of staying competitive with major manufacturing countries, which have formulated their own digital development strategies.
In China, the integration of 5G and industrial Internet has become an important engine for the digital transformation of the economy. On November 16, 2021, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the 14th Five-Year Plan for the development of the information and communications industry. The plan proposes that by 2025, a high-quality industrial internet network covering all regions and industries will be built, and a batch of 5G+ industrial internet benchmarks will be created.
In Germany, with the development of Industry 4.0, 5G has captured the attention of many large industrial enterprises. As early as 2019, industrial groups in Germany required the planning of 5G spectrum for the construction of enterprise networks. German telecom regulator (BNetzA) began awarding 5G private network licenses in the 3.7-3.8 GHz band in 2019, and then opened up the 24.25-27.5 GHz band (26 GHz band) on January 1, 2021. German Volkswagen, Lufthansa and Siemens have started to build out their own 5G private networks.
In Japan, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) released the Local 5G Implementation Guidelines on December 17, 2019, and began to accept applications for licenses to operate local 5G services. In 2020, the wireless spectrum resources that can be used for 5G private networks were expanded to allow more companies to use 5G networks.
In France, on March 17, 2022, the government and regulator Arcep announced that industrial players can apply for trial spectrum in the 3.8-4.0 GHz band until the end of the year. Businesses in sectors such as manufacturing, logistics, energy, healthcare and smart city can apply to this initiative to trial different use cases.
The development of 5G private networks brings new opportunities to vertical industries, telecom operators, telecom equipment vendors, and industrial application service providers. Especially for large economies with high industrialization level and huge production scale, the active development of 5G private network services can promote the long-term development of their intelligent manufacturing strategies.
Industry-Wide Efforts to Develop 5G Private Network
With 5G empowering a growing list of vertical industries, the 5G private network solution industry is taking off with many players involved including operators, traditional telecom equipment makers, IT and cloud service providers, and industrial application integrators. Focusing on the 5G private network, operators in China have defined three major private network scenarios based on industry requirements (Fig. 1):
—
Virtual private network: A dedicated private network based on 5G slicing.
—
Hybrid private network: A hybrid network where the control plane is shared, and UPF/MEC is deployed on the enterprise campus.
—
Independent private network: Deploying dedicated 5GC at the enterprise edge, which is isolated from the public network, and using independent or shared wireless base stations as required.
Operators have defined flexible private network solutions. In addition to helping operators in providing private network solutions, equipment vendors have also proposed differentiated end-to-end solutions to meet industry requirements. In the process of joint exploration with industry partners, ZTE has launched an all-scenario private network solution to meet the differentiated network requirements of various industries.
Traditional telecom equipment vendors strive to provide customers with new solutions integrating network, computing and services in the ToB private network market. Cloud vendors that provide customers with fast and convenient private network solutions are a new emerging force in the private network solution market. Through the cloud, they can provide networking services and resources required by services or applications to customers in all the areas at any time. In addition, cloud vendors redefine the features of private network design, commissioning, maintenance, and charging from the perspective of users, changing private network from a carrier-grade network to a consumer-grade application product.
Some industrial integrators work with traditional industrial network equipment manufacturers to enter the 5G private network market. However, facing an all-around competition from telecom equipment manufacturers, operators, and cloud vendors, industrial network equipment manufacturers will gradually lose their competitive advantages due to technical bottlenecks and other restrictions, and fall back to their inherent fields.
Since 2018, China has held four "Bloom Cup" 5G application contests. Rich experience has been accumulated in the planning, construction, O&M, and application innovation of 5G private network, especially in the fields of port, energy, mine, and industrial manufacturing. ZTE has won several first-class awards together with telecom operators and industrial customers in those "Bloom Cup" competitions.
ZTE's Private Network Solution
Capitalizing on its almost 40 years of experience in the communications industry, ZTE has launched a full-scenario private network solution including the following three aspects:
—Flexible customization of network functions: Customers can select network function components on demand to build private network solutions suitable for their industries.
—Hardware in series: To meet the requirements of different deployment environments, serialized hardware forms ranging from ultra-small bag, standard server to cloud cabinet or multi-rack are designed. Meanwhile, the dust-proof, explosion-proof and waterproof requirements of the equipment are also met.
—Open operating environment: The 5G private network can be deployed on mainstream public cloud or private cloud platforms. The network capability can also be opened to third-party applications to enable a concise and flexible deployment and operation environment.
ZTE's private network solution mainly provides customers with two product-based solutions: i5GC (industrial private network product series) and iCube (digital magic cube integrating the cloud, network, service and O&M).
ZTE i5GC helps customers build a simplified, professional, fast and highly reliable industrial private network. Its lightweight, low-cost, design-free, easy O&M, and one-click commissioning features make it easy for customers to purchase, build and maintain 5G private networks. For the mining industry, ZTE provides dedicated voice and data networks to meet all-round communication requirements for data and voice services. For the metallurgical industry, ZTE meets upload and download control requirements by providing big uplink and high reliability network solutions. For the transportation & port industries, ZTE provides dedicated and secure slicing solutions together with telecom operators, and meets the data security and network reliability requirements of customers through the UPF offloading capability. For industrial manufacturing, ZTE provides low-latency, high reliability, point-to-multipoint, and committable SLA network guarantees to help the industry become more sophisticated and intelligent.
ZTE iCube, with i5GC as its basic capability, integrates wireless, wired, transmission, MEC and third-party applications on demand to build the cloud network infrastructure. In addition to providing the network to users, iCube also provides dual-core cloud infrastructure driven by VMs and containers to provide the connectivity and computing power resources required by the industrial customers.
With the accelerated deployments of 5G private networks in the vertical fields, 5G network application is advancing from the periphery to the core of the industry. ZTE's private network solutions have been put into large-scale commercial use in both domestic and overseas markets, and have been piloted in key industries. ZTE will continue to work with operators and industrial customers to promote the intelligent development of all industries.
.png){kind=icon}
.png){kind=icon}
.png){kind=icon}
.png){kind=icon}