One of the emerging uses for 5G is to create private 5G cellular networks for large businesses. The best candidates for 5G technology are businesses that need to connect and control a lot of devices or those that need the low latency promised by the 5G standards. This might include businesses like robotized factories, chemical plants, busy shipping ports and airports.

5G has some advantages over other technologies like WiFi, 4G LTE and Ethernet that makes it ideal for communications rich environments. Cellular network can replace the costly and bulky hard-wired networks needed for Ethernet. It’s not practical to wire an Ethernet network to the hordes of tiny IoT sensors that are needed to operate a modern manufacturing factory. It’s also not practical to have a hard-wired network in a dynamic environment where equipment needs to be moved for various purposes.

5G holds a number of advantages over WiFi and 4G. Frequency slicing means that just the right amount of bandwidth can be delivered to every device in the factory, from the smallest sensor to devices that must upload or download large amounts of data. The 5G standard also allows for setting priorities by device so that mission critical devices always get priority over background devices. The low latency on 5G means that there can be real time coordination and feedback between devices when that’s needed for time-critical manufacturing devices. 5G also offers the ability to communicate simultaneously with a huge number of devices, something that is not practical or possible with WiFi or LTE.

Any discussion of IoT in the past has generally evoked discussion of factories with huge number of tiny sensors that monitor and control every aspect of the manufacturing process. While there have been big strides in developing robotized factories, that concept of a concentrated communications mesh to control the factories has not been possible until the 5G standard.

We are a few years away from having 5G networks that can deliver on all of the promised benefits of the standard. The big telecom manufacturers like Ericsson, Huawei, Qualcomm and Nokia along with numerous smaller companies are working on perfecting the technology and the devices that will support advanced IoT networks.

I read that an Audi plant in Germany is already experimenting with a private cellular network to control the robots that glue car components together. Its robot networks were hard-wired and were not providing fast enough feedback to the robots for the needed precision of the tasks. The company says it’s pleased with the performance so far. However, that test was not yet real 5G and any real use of 5G in factories is still a few years off as manufacturers perfect the wireless technology and perfect the sensor networks.

Probably the biggest challenge in the US will be finding the spectrum to make this work. In the US most of the spectrum that is best suited to operating a 5G factory are sold in huge geographic footprints and the spectrum will be owned by the typical large spectrum holders. Large factory owners might agree to lease spectrum from the large carriers, but they are not going to want those carriers to insert themselves into the design or operation of these complex networks.

In Europe there are already discussions at the various regulatory bodies on possibly setting aside spectrum for factories and other large private users. However, in this country to do so means opening the door to allowing the spectrum to be sold for smaller footprints – something the large wireless carriers would surely challenge. It would be somewhat ironic if the US takes the lead in developing 5G technology but then can’t make it work in factories due to our spectrum allocation policies.