Perhaps the 5G opportunity for telecom carriers has been misunderstood all along.

While mobile carriers have struggled quite publicly with the high costs and low returns of their respective 5G mobile networks, there’s a chance that private 5G networks could provide some salvation.

Private networks at the Edge, more specifically, could be a key driver for telcos finally monetizing their 5G networks.

Public or Private?

A private mobile network is based on an isolated network and designed to serve a specific purpose for a particular business or use case, such as a factory. By contrast, a public network is wireless connectivity that is available to everyone, delivered to an end user's handheld device via the mobile carriers in that particular market.

Private networks offer greater control over who can access the networks, meaning they have an added element of security for enterprises.

According to Téral Research, as of last year, just over a quarter (26.7 percent) of total private wireless worldwide was based solely on Private 5G. The majority (52 percent) utilize LTE, considered to be a "transitional" 4G technology.

Private 5G offers faster speeds, lower latency, and higher bandwidth than LTE networks, and has been tipped to support Industry 4.0, providing data-driven automation, advanced analytics, and smart sensing to boost productivity. These private networks have been deployed to support a range of industries, including smart factories, military and defense, and mining.

Private 5G take-off has been slow

These 5G private networks haven’t taken off as anticipated, notes Stéphane Téral, founder and chief analyst at Téral Research.

“5G is coming, but in many instances, you don't need the performance of 5G or all the features of 5G,” he says. “It's in factories when you have robots that need to communicate with each other, and you need very stringent latency.”

Rosalind Craven, principal analyst, private networks and telecoms, STL Partners, agrees.

“If you go back maybe three years, the hype around private 5G was at its peak,” Craven tells DCD. “There were some really promising deployments happening, and frustration already existed about 5G not living up to its potential and finding that sweet spot for monetization.”

This combination of factors created hysteria across the industry that private 5G would provide the answer for 5G’s monetization headache, Craven argues. She notes that this wasn’t helped by some of the predictions around private 5G.

“There have been some quite dodgy forecasts out there around private networks that were predicting a huge, huge, market size,” Craven says.

“One of the things that has been learned slowly about private networks is that they're not just a shrunk-down version of a public network. The demands are different, the engineering is different. The things that you have to consider are different, and these factors are also different from private network to private network.”

A Dell’Oro report in April suggests that the tide is turning for private networks; however, private 4G/5G RAN sales increased by more than 40 percent last year, reaching 3-5 percent of total RAN sales.

Time for the Edge

Technologies such as 4G, more specifically LTE, and even 2G have been used to create private networks before 5G came along.

So, where does Edge computing come into play, and how can it support private 5G?

While private 5G networks provide the required low-latency wireless network for localized areas, Edge computing provides the element of data processing, bringing this closer to the devices that utilize the data.

“A few years ago, multi-Edge computing (MEC) was seen as a strong market, growing rapidly, but it did not grow as expected,” notes Téral, who refers to the Covid-19 pandemic as slowing down the take-up as workforces remained at home and not at their offices.

MEC is a type of Edge compute technology centered around mobile communications.

Unlike conventional Edge, which tends to process data closer to the source, MEC leverages mobile network infrastructure to enable applications at the Edge.

“We see many people going back to the office after the pandemic,” he adds. “Because of this, enterprises are seeing a rise in devices in their offices, and that requires compute power close to the Edge. Because you want to connect all these devices, these devices require compute power nearby.”

There appears to be an opportunity for the Edge to play a key role in these 5G networks.

A report released by STL says that private 5G Edge can provide both enterprise and telecom companies with opportunities for monetization.

Both private 5G and Edge can be deployed separately, but there’s now more of an appetite from enterprises to deploy private networks and Edge together, notes the report.

Together, they’re tipped to generate revenue streams for enterprises and telcos and enable use cases around predictive maintenance, AR/VR, and technology around AGVs (Autonomous Guided Vehicles).

“If you also have Edge expertise, the two things go hand in hand,” explains STL’s Craven, who notes encouraging talk around private 5G and Edge being a platform that can bring AI into an operational technology (OT) world.

She says that the private 5G Edge is going to be essential to prop up some of these use cases that the enterprise demands.

“When we talk about the private 5G Edge coming into its own, it’s particularly things that are leveraging computer vision, such as potential industrial use cases.”

Craven says it will play a big role in supporting advanced predictive maintenance and using AI for process monitoring and quality control, where data can be analyzed in real time, and where problems can be predicted before and issues can be found immediately.

One particular use case that is a proven example of private 5G Edge, Craven points out, is around AGVs and also AMR (Autonomous Mobile Robots).

AGVs are essentially robots that follow a set path or track for material transportation, while AMRs are autonomous robots designed to navigate uncontrolled environments without the need for a fixed route.

Both have been deployed to support logistics firms and manufacturers in settings such as warehouses and factories. An example of this can be seen at an Amazon warehouse, where AGVs are used to increase efficiency and reduce manual labor.

Nokia’s private Edge

One such vendor that has a heritage in the private wireless space is Nokia.

Indeed, the Finnish company was one of the first to deploy a private wireless network, doing so back in the early 2010s for mining giant Rio Tinto in Australia.

Fast forward to 2025, and Nokia says it has deployed private wireless networks for 890 customers globally, with 24 percent of those in North America.

Téral says Nokia is a pioneer in private wireless, referring to the company’s longevity and vast number of deployments.

To further support the company’s private 5G and Edge ambitions, the vendor signed a partnership with digital infrastructure and smart building solutions provider Andorix in June.

“Private 5G networks are transforming how enterprises operate, and in-building connectivity is a critical piece of that puzzle," said Willie Kopp, head of enterprise campus Edge sales, North America, Nokia, at the time of the deal.

"By partnering with Andorix, we are combining 5G technology with proven inbuilding converged network deployment expertise to support the growing demand for private 5G connectivity within the built environment in North America."

Kopp elaborated further on the importance of Edge for some of Nokia’s private wireless customers in an interview with DCD.

“Having that far Edge compute is still something that is extremely valuable to a lot of our customers,” said Kopp, who highlighted the importance of Edge for the optimization of AI.

“I think AI is great when you have a bunch of Nvidia H200 [GPUs] in a datacenter that are training a model. But once that model is trained, it needs to be implemented and deployed at the Edge so that you can actually gain the insights and the values from that inference model. And that's really where we start to see Edge compute become extremely valuable and actually a requirement for a lot of customers.”

Telcos also deliver on the private Edge

Mobile carriers are also taking the private 5G Edge opportunity seriously. US giant Verizon is one such telecom provider pushing hard in this area.

Hans Vestberg, CEO, Verizon claimed last year that the carrier is best placed to maximize the potential of generative AI Edge computing, noting at the time that Verizon had been talking about the opportunities around mobile Edge computing since 2018.

As it happens, some of those opportunities have centered around private networks. Last year, the carrier signed a deal with GPU giant Nvidia to develop a range of AI applications that will run over its 5G private network with private MEC.

According to Verizon, this will "deliver real-time AI services on premises for enterprise customers."

The telco said at the time that the stack is being built to handle "compute-intensive apps” such as Generative AI LLMs and Vision Language Models, video streaming, broadcast management, Computer Vision (CV), AR, VR, XR, AMR/AGV, and IoT.

Verizon has deployed a number of private 5G networks across the US, utilizing its MEC capabilities, including at a veterans' hospital in California two years ago.

Barriers to wider adoption

Despite this momentum across the industry, the deployment of private 5G Edge networks hasn’t been as popular as expected. This is because multiple barriers to deployment remain, Craven says.

“Cost and complexity are both issues that we see being gradually tackled by the market. There is an awareness that for many enterprises to become open to it, costs have to come down,” she says.

Should the costs come down, Craven says more new entrants could join the market, and even encourage some of the more established names to take the plunge.

A change of mindset from telcos and vendors to offer more tailored solutions should also be considered, she adds.

“The telcos and some of the big vendors who've had some success have maybe been getting in their own way in how they approach enterprises,” she adds. Instead of selling a horizontal connectivity solution to the enterprise, the approach should be more vertically tailored, Craven argues.

There’s also the debate around whether private networks and WiFi can co-exist with one another, or whether it’s a case of “either or.”

Craven suggests that WiFi is capable of deploying AGVs, for example, and works adequately instead of Private 5G networks in certain situations.

The “private 5G versus WiFi fight” has been “problematic,” she adds, explaining: “People should be working more on how to offer you the right connectivity for the right situation, sometimes it makes more sense to use WiFi, and other times private 5G.”

Falling into place

While 5G has split opinion since its inception, with many, Téral included, adamant that launching the network as 5G Non Standalone (5G NSA) was a mistake, he says there are signs that the technology is falling into place, and that the number of 5G private networks will flourish.

Berg Insight, an IoT analyst firm noted that 4,700 private LTE/5G networks were deployed across the globe by the end of last year, at a market value of an estimated $1.8 billion.

Téral is, however, optimistic that further deployments will follow, despite the slow start.

“When a private network is deployed, it works and it delivers to the performance required. So this is proven,” he says, but does caution that costs are still high.

“As we see more and more networks deployed, the cost will go down, because right now the cost is still significant, so you'd better have very specific requirements to justify the cost of deploying a private 5G network