45 countries/territories have been identified with private network deployments based on LTE/5G or where 5G-suitable private network spectrum licenses have been assigned. The new ‘Private Mobile Networks’ market status report of GSA reveals that while LTE still accounts for the majority of private mobile networks deployment, the market share of 5G is growing.
According to GSA’s data, LTE is being used in 64% of the cataloged private mobile networks down from 81% in October 2020. In contrast, 5G is now being deployed (or planned for deployment) in 44% of private mobile networks — 8% of these are deployed with LTE and 5G combined.
For local area private mobile networks, manufacturing leads as an early adopter with 79 identified companies holding suitable licenses or involved in known pilots or deployments of LANs. Automotive companies, as a subsector, account for over a quarter (25.3%) of the abovementioned sector. Coming in second is the mining industry with ports also actively trialing/deploying local area private mobile networks.
“The demand for private mobile networks based on LTE, and increasingly 5G, technologies are being driven by the spiraling data, security, digitization and enterprise mobility requirements of modern business and government entities,” said Joe Barrett, GSA president. “Organisations of all types are combining connected systems with big data and analytics to transform operations, increase automation and efficiency or deliver new services to their users. Wireless networking with LTE or 5G enables these transformations to take place even in the most dynamic, remote or highly secure environments while offering the scale benefits of a technology that has already been deployed worldwide.”