- Siemens told Fierce Network that private 5G is crucial for autonomous use cases
- Adoption rate for private 5G is significantly slower for industrial applications than it is for IT or consumer customers
- Currently, Siemens sees customers who need to cover a large area adopting the tech first
The increasing availability of private licensed spectrum in various countries helped motivate networking equipment giant Siemens to move into the private network equipment space five years ago, according to Daniel Mai, director of industrial wireless communication at Siemens, who spoke to Fierce Network this month in Barcelona.
In addition, industrial spectrum access in Brazil, Germany and Sweden led to the production of its first private network radio. “It took us a bit of time to develop our equipment,” said Mai. As operators were selling overly expensive twins of their public network infrastructure to enterprise customers, "we influenced a couple of governments to address this topic and grant access to spectrum," he said, noting that the European Union is now looking to harmonize spectrum now.
“That’s good news for us and exciting for the industry because it was...quite a patchwork,” Mai said.
Mobility is still generally the first use case for industry, he noted. “Each production line in [a] German car manufacturing factory produces a car every 90 seconds,” he said. “So you understand how critical it is to have uninterrupted connectivity.”
Industries using private 5G
Mai noted that Siemens mainly sees “industries who need to cover a very large area” as being the customers for private 5G. This includes the chemical industry, ports and harbors, as well as steel and mining. “If you break it down to use cases, it comes down again to the cranes, [automated guided vehicles], push to talk, autonomous inspection use cases, where you use drones [and] machine vision,” Mai noted.
However, noted that the adoption rate is significantly slower for industrial applications than it is for IT or consumer customers. That is because machinery can be installed on the factory floor for 10 or 20 years or even longer, he said.
“You won’t replace a robot or a HEV because there is new technology available, a press is still a press, and robot is still welding cars for quite some time,” Mai said. “So the adoption rate is significantly slower.”
Nonetheless, Mai said that Siemens is “almost surprised about the success we see now” with the adoption of private 5G technology, albeit at a low level. “It is happening,” Mai said.