Backgrounder:

Private Wireless Radio Access Network (RAN) revenue growth slowed in the fourth quarter of 2023 on a year-over-year basis.  However, full-year revenues accelerated by approximately 40% in 2023, propelling private wireless to comprise around 2% of the overall RAN market.

“Private wireless RANs are now growing at a formidable pace, in contrast to public RAN and enterprise WLAN – both segments are projected to contract in 2024,” said Stefan Pongratz, Vice President at Dell’Oro Group in April.

The top 3 Private Wireless RAN suppliers in 2023 were Huawei, Nokia, and Ericsson. Excluding China, they were Nokia, Ericsson, and Samsung.

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Nokia leads in Private RANs:

Nokia recently told Fierce Network that it signed 30 new private networking contracts in the second quarter of 2024.  Nokia has said that it has signed more than 760 private network contracts around the world. NGIC, Sigma Lithium and Solis are some of the most recent names it has signed.

Nokia said that 78% of its private network business is based on 4G LTE-Advanced [1.], compared to 18% being 5G only, and the remaining 4% combining the two broadband cellular technologies.

Note 1. In October 2010, LTE-Advanced successfully passed the ITU-R’s evaluation process and was found to meet or exceed IMT-Advanced requirements. It was standardized a “IMT Advanced,” which  support low to high mobility applications and a wide range of data rates in accordance with user and service demands in multiple user environments. IMT Advanced also has capabilities for high quality multimedia applications within a wide range of services and platforms, providing a significant improvement in performance and quality of service.

Image courtesy of Research Gate

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David de Lancellotti, VP of enterprise campus edge business at Nokia talked to Fierce about Nokia’s performance in the private networking space. “Thirty in Q2, and roughly 50 — a little more than 50 — in the first half,” he said of contracts signed.

“We kind of jumped into this a bit earlier than anybody else,” Nokia’s de Lancellotti explained. “I think we’ve always taken a real service provider approach in terms of quality, in terms of feature set [and] in terms of roadmap,” while noting Nokia’s “real drive to pick up the enterprise space.”

Industry verticals – transportation, energy and manufacturing – continue to “lead the way” for private networking contracts in Q2. “When we talk about transportation, I think that’s the port side of business, which continues to be strong for us,” David said.

References:

https://www.fierce-network.com/wireless/nokia

Private Wireless RAN Revenues up ~40 Percent in 2023, According to Dell’Oro Group

Top private networking providers in ports

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_Advanced

https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/study-groups/rsg5/rwp5d/imt-adv/Pages/default.aspx

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Network-architecture-of-LTE-Advanced_fig1_333886291