Private 5G networks
Private 5G judged by what is already running: below ground in a mine, inside pulp and paper manufacturing, and the world's first private network connecting a metro. Productisation is what changed, turning a long bespoke integration into something an enterprise can trial and then scale. The remaining constraint is awareness rather than technology.
We hear a great deal about the opportunity, so it is worth saying where we already are. We have extraordinary customer projects live on private 4G and 5G today, and we are probably one of the leading companies with a productised private 5G network.
Three of them make the point. We have deep mining industry here in the north, and we provide private networks below the surface to connect the machines and the people, with push to talk, low latency, security and the resilience that a manufacturing environment of that kind demands. Forestry is a huge industry in the Nordics, and we run a private 5G network for pulp and paper manufacturing. And in Norway we built the world's first private 5G network connecting a metro, the trains and the underground, where tight scheduling is the operational driver.
Productisation is what changed. A private network used to be a bespoke and lengthy project, and now it is easy to get into, run as a proof of concept and then scale, which changes the sales motion and the economics together. Connectivity is the platform rather than the product: once the secure private infrastructure exists, an ecosystem of applications, analytics, transportation and autonomous operation gets unleashed on top of it.
The challenge now is awareness. This is a new field, and it needs us and our partners to make manufacturing, transportation, autonomous driving and healthcare aware of what security, low latency, resilience and autonomy actually deliver for them. We are past proof of concept, we are commercial, we see strong customer satisfaction, and we are open to partners who want to build on it.