In this article
- Fulfilling the vision of a fully unified Wi-Fi and private 5G (P5G) solution
- Expanding to 500 P5G customers and 25 communication service providers (CSPs) in 10 countries.
- Integrating P5G and Wi-Fi at the 2023 Ryder Cup for a frictionless connectivity experience
- Upcoming 2024 Mobile World Congress sessions
Blog co-written by Karim El Malki, Vice President for Private 5G Strategy and Integration, HPE Aruba Networking
Since announcing our acquisition of Athonet last year, we’ve been working diligently to combine private 5G technology with enterprise wired and wireless networking in a common management framework—to the benefit of service providers and enterprises alike. Having achieved some important milestones, we are back to report on our progress toward realizing that vision.
P5G represents an exciting opportunity to augment the cost-effective, high-capacity, secure connectivity of Wi-Fi with wider area coverage, deterministic service quality, and high-speed mobility of 5G. But we believe its full potential can only be achieved through comprehensive integration with existing and familiar enterprise network management tools and workflows.
In consultation with our enterprise customers, we have identified four key capabilities of P5G that can bring significant value in enterprise settings:
- Large coverage areas, particularly outdoors, enabling applications like those powering warehouses and distribution hubs, airports/seaports, and large campuses.
- Rapidly moving client devices, requiring continuous exchanges of telemetry and control data, such as IoT and IIoT-enabled robotics and automated guided vehicles (AGVs) in warehousing and industrial settings.
- Challenging radio environments, complementing W-Fi service in dynamic manufacturing facilities intolerant of coverage gaps.
- Secure back-office communication at enterprises with significant public access, where P5G can offer business-critical or latency-sensitive applications connectivity services segregated from public-facing traffic.
Journey thus far
To meet these needs, we’ve focused in tandem on two critical pursuits. On the one hand, we are devising methods to scale the deployment and management of complex P5G networks, so they can be efficiently delivered and easily consumed by the broadest possible enterprise market. On the other, we are unifying the network administration, identity management, role-based access, quality of service, and data path management components, enabling the enterprises that manage and devices traversing these networks to enjoy a robust experience.
Rather than offering 5G and enterprise Wi-Fi as separate services, we’re building upon the strengths of our experience providing comprehensive, unified wired and wireless connectivity. Highlights of the resulting solution include:
- Deploy P5G small cell equipment in a similar manner as other networking products, like switches and access points, significantly decreasing complexity and cost.
- Provision and deploy P5G from a centralized dashboard for streamlined and familiar configuration and installation.
- Unify security, visibility, and management, enabling IT departments to apply and manage role-based policies consistently across the combined P5G and Wi-Fi networks whether in the cloud, on-prem, or hybrid.
- Enable IT departments to easily trial P5G in their own environments, providing a better understanding of where and how to implement it.
Growing enterprise and CSP relationships
We’re pleased to report our efforts thus far have helped us grow our relationships with communications service providers (CSPs) to 25 companies in 10 countries. For CSPs, the advantage of joining our ecosystem is to deepen customer relationships and accelerate growth with the enablement, tools, and resources for managing the customer lifecycle.
An example of this is Tampnet. It’s using Athonet’s 5G technology to deliver high-capacity offshore connectivity and mission critical push-to-talk for their customers with energy generation platforms in the most rugged environments, such as the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.
We’re also working with Bearcom to deliver pop-up connectivity that combines the strengths of private cellular for mission-critical applications with high-performance Wi-Fi coverage, successfully supporting one of the largest 2024 Super Bowl tailgate parties in Las Vegas.
In addition, we now have over 500 enterprise customers across every geography worldwide. They range across multiple industry verticals, including clean energy technologies, large public venues, industrial production, manufacturing, mining, public safety, remote hospitality, transportation, and many more.
Making it so: 2023 Ryder Cup
Our first opportunity to showcase the benefits of our integrated enterprise P5G and Wi-Fi solution came at the 2023 Ryder Cup. There, we helped transform the Marco Simone Golf & Country Club in the Roman countryside into a 350 acre (142 hectare) stadium golf course. The venue had multiple unique communications needs as existing connectivity was challenging and the archeological importance of the venue limited the amount of temporary event cabling that could be run.
During the event, high-capacity Wi-Fi supplied connectivity to thousands of fans. The set up enabled attendees to enjoy new app-powered insights on their personal devices, such as a player locator that not only provided an interactive map but also permitted clicking through for a player’s score and other information.
Simultaneously, P5G provided wide-area coverage to more remote parts of the golf course, as well as a secure network dedicated to critical operations staff. This supplied event organizers with full-course operational coverage for critical services like security, stewarding, ticketing, scoring, and weather monitoring, unaffected by the crowd’s high demand for bandwidth-hungry apps.
What’s next
No matter whether you’re an enterprise evaluating the options for adopting P5G or a CSP delivering private cellular services to enterprise clients, it’s an exciting time for next-gen connectivity. We look forward to sharing more as the year progresses and we begin a phased rollout of the capabilities we’re engineering, starting with the integration of small cell radios and P5G core management.
To learn more about the HPE Aruba Networking P5G solution, visit us at Mobile World Congress, which will include a session featuring Michael Cole, Chief Technology Officer of the European Tour Group and Ryder Cup Europe.
We also invite you to check out online resources including how the HPE relationship with the Ryder Cup delivered frictionless P5G experiences at the 2023 event with HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform, including HPE GreenLake for Networking, HPE Aruba Networking Central, and the new HPE sustainability dashboard, to determine how they can help you accomplish your business objectives and goals.
