Matthew BoyleIn the latest editorial report by RCR Mobile, the state of private 5G adoption in Industry 4.0 technology is analyzed, revealing significant challenges that hinder rapid adoption and scaling. Key players like Nokia and Siemens have identified six main obstacles: spectrum availability, the scarcity of compatible devices, and concerns about value and return on investment. The limited availability of spectrum for private networks remains a pressing issue, particularly outside major markets like North America and Western Europe. The ecosystem for IoT integration and private network spectrum is still in its infancy, leading to high deployment costs and a lack of standardized commercial devices. Moreover, businesses struggle to demonstrate the value of personal 5G, which is essential for convincing stakeholders to invest in the technology. Cybersecurity remains a top concern, with companies needing robust strategies to secure their networks. Lastly, the need for skilled workers in the Industry 4.0 landscape poses both a barrier and an opportunity for growth. The upcoming webinar on October 10 will delve deeper into these themes, offering a platform for discussing effective solutions to these challenges.
RCR Mobile Report Highlights Key Barriers to Private 5G Adoption in Industry 4.0
RCR Mobile conducted research on the state of personal 5G in Industry 4.0 in a new editorial report that was released this month. Among the responses, Nokia and Siemens differently compiled a list of five blockers, as of today, to its quick sale and scale. Their answers matched, more or less, and have, in turn, been crossed and compiled into a second list – of six barriers to scale.
Here they are, the quotes are from David de Lancellotti, vice president for enterprise campus edge sales at Nokia, and Daniel Mai, director of professional cellular communication at Siemens. Note that this article serves only as a summary of the upcoming report and a preview of a webinar on the same subject the following week ( October 10 ); both will explore the topic of its themes in greater depth. Their responses, in the interim, provide a concise overview of the issues facing the market.
1 | SPECTRUM
Cellular technology is always and always about spectrum, and its widespread use for business in some markets was the primary factor that helped to create the secret 4G/5G market in the first place. But it is a finite resource, and it remains little accessible. The availability of a spectrum for personal networks is” not already available in all countries,” Mai claims. However, the secret 5G market is largely concentrated in North America, Western Europe, and parts of Asia Pacific.
There are yawning gaps in-between, and also within – where regulators are yet to liberate spectrum directly to enterprises. The global picture is splottered because major mobile operators continue to control the licensed cellular spectrum in these geographies, even as they experiment with different ways to install private networks in local 4G/5G bands. The ease of scale depends on international standardization of local enterprise spectrum.
Mai notes” first steps” ( “partially implemented” ) by the European Union, at least, to “equalise” usage of the 3.8-4.2 GHz band for private 5G across the bloc – as the UK has already pioneered, and as certain EU member states have already prepared. But regulation is a gradual process, generally, and the planet is huge. Therefore, work will continue to build a internationally standardized spectrum for personal 5G, which will likely never be finished.
2 | DEVICES
Ah, devices, it’s usually devices – either absent or too expensive. Such is the novelty of 5G technology, unravelling in the market in phased 3GPP releases, and such is the schedule of business equipment, rolling into market on decades-long upgrade cycles, that the crossover ecosystem for commercial 5G devices was not going to be fast. Mai comments:” Industrial 5G is a new technology, and the ecosystem does n’t exist yet – and will only develop gradually”.
As a result, all the itty-gritty business IoT that was flagged for “massive” 5G connectivity in Industry 4.0 as part of the classic 5G hype story is still futuristic. For example, for a wide range of bright tools,” Particular end devices and therefore applications are not yet possible,” Mai says. Nokia says the exact about devices, citing a “lack of standardisation”. Nokia has been forced to create its own commercial 4G/5G devices because the issue has become so severe.
These include ruggedised handhelds, wearable cameras, speaker microphones, and helmet-headsets – designed for “harsh environments …]and ] validated for high performance”, says de Lancellotti. But even as connected-worker solutions come available, and big-ticket AGVs and AMRs get connected, and perhaps as smart tools and componentry go into production, they come with a premium, first – which has to be worked into the original business case…
3| VALUE
The bottom line, next: how to make money back. Mai at Siemens comments:”In industry, efficiency is the most important asset. Companies want to make sure that new technology is trustworthy and valuable. Effective references from early adopters will increase the content of this site. The point is that the ecosystem needs to work harder to share and promote its successes, demonstrating how productivity and efficiency have improved as a result of secret 5G.”
Even yet, how it has inspired innovation, and crucially, how these different upsides map to economic performance. Of course, the Industry 4.0 market is scattered across sectors and dynamic within sectors. Various industries have different priorities, and competing businesses in the same fields often reveal their advantages. Architectural blueprints offer value, to streamline deployments, but clearly-plotted use-case references stand out for enterprises.
Beyond, there is a challenge to make personal 5G more affordable – or just to make it more appealing. De Lancellotti at Nokia cites “high original deployment costs” as a barrier. To an extent, these can be misunderstood, first – on the grounds mobile requires less hardware than Wi-Fi, say, and delivers more performance. But Nokia has also shrunk its DAC private 5G system down for smaller deployments, constantly, and even bundled it into a subscription.
He says:”We have addressed]initial deployment costs with our as-a-service model, and by adapting our DAC solution to smaller sites, and also by bundling]with compute hardware”.
4 | SYSTEMS
Or IT/OT integration, in taller terms. This is a jagged issue, for context, both Siemens and Nokia consider private 5G to be an Twisted discipline, mainly – to be commanded by technicians on the shopfloor, as part of important production systems. Which is almost in dispute, Industry 4.0 is an OT-geared domain, after all. If specialist OT systems are to mesh with conventional IT functions, they do not contest the importance of IT integration on the “northbound” side.
However, there is still a larger debate about who has the upper hand in the management of business 5G devices and applications, and consequently of industrial 5G networks, which will be exacerbated until it is resolved. Other vendors appear, theoretically, to side with the IT crowd in their pursuit of private 5G sales. This will be more explained in the future report, which will be broken down into two distinct integration issues. However, they are conjoined in this response from the two businesses.
Nokia cites “complexity of integration with IT/OT systems” as a barrier to scale. De Lancellotti mentions its work with northern IT and cloud connectors as well as role-based access and security controls. Mai at Siemens hints at ethnic issues with IT/OT in enterprises. He says:” The integration of OT and IT is not clearly regulated in many companies. Due to the fact that 5G connects both systems, responsibility must be clarified in businesses, which frequently leads to delays.
5 | SECURITY
Quickly, a couple of final barriers-to-scale – and the only places where Siemens and Nokia differ on their lists (even if both would acknowledge each others entries). Siemens rounds-out its bottom five with a defining Industry 4.0 challenge: cybersecurity. If it’s not safe and dependable, it is not going to fly – is the message. Mai says: “Cybersecurity is vital for business companies. For a new technology like 5G, reliable concepts must be developed]for it ] to be securely integrated into corporate networks”
6 | SKILLS
However, Nokia puts a ultimate focus on skills and staff. De Lancellotti says:”Restricted expertise and skills within the Industry 4.0] workforce is both a barrier and an opportunity”. And while there are issues with 5G experience and IT/OT knowhow across the board that could be streamlined on all sides to make new Industry 4.0 systems more affordable and marketable, he is really advancing the conversation into the realm of data science and AI.
And in so doing, he is taking a cheeky opportunity to plug Nokia’s own work, pointing to its proto-generative AI tool, MX Workmate, which goes with its edge network-and-compute products, and adapts large language model (LLM) technology, as found in consumer AI platforms, for OT environments. The purpose of Industry 4.0 is to address the skilled labor shortage by filtering hard-earned Twisted expertise using an Artificial chatbot trained on domain-specific data.
It’s a rascally ploy, in the context of a flat market review piece, but the point possibly stands: one way or another, every party involved in the design and management of new Industry 4.0 systems has to ‘gen-up’ – on biological systems, professional systems, analytics systems.
