According to additional research conducted by a provider of private cellular networks on the business value of private cellular networks,… Private cellphone networks are superior to business Wi-Fi. The findings confirm prior total cost of ownership (TCO) estimates from Nokia and others (and they are not about to say anything else). But they are also worth reiterating, if only to explain the present sales pitch for private LTE and 5G.
This time, US-based Celona is promoting a new TCO tool claiming that private LTE/5G can save businesses 50 to 75 percent on production expenses, enabling a return on investment (ROI) in just three months – “versus conventional alternatives for enterprise wireless”. Using shared CBRS spectrum, this is the narrative for industrial firms seeking to impose the Industry 4.0 narrative in the United States, where Celona is operating.
Mobile Experts, which conducted the investigation, compared private (pseudo) industrial-grade cellular to private enterprise-grade Wi-Fi – and presumably had a hand in developing the new TCO calculator. A statement implied that “a Celona wireless network utilising private cellular spectrum… delivered 50 to 75 percent annual savings by eliminating network-related production disruptions… [and] loss in material and labour costs”.
Indeed, the news release, if not the study itself, focuses on a single illustrative example – a U.S. steel manufacturer that has tested Celona’s CBRS system – to illustrate its headline (50-75 percent savings, potentially extending to 200 percent / three-month returns) numbers. “Due to the eliminated downtime for critical operations, the report also reviewed the cost of acquisition for different technologies evaluated,” it says.
“This acquisition cost model included hardware and software components of wireless access points, LAN switching, cabling and labour costs associated with access-point installation, and cable pulls to the access points. The findings showed that a fully integrated Celona system can deliver up to 30 and 200 percent cost savings when compared to enterprise Wi-Fi and carrier vendor infrastructure system costs, respectively.”
The majority of deployment-related cost savings result from the fact that wider-area cellular requires fewer cell sites (“higher wireless coverage cell size per radio”) to connect production environments and many other warehouses and industrial facilities. According to the statement, it requires four to six times fewer indoor and outdoor access points than Wi-Fi. Specifically, the paper compares private LTE/5G against Wi-Fi 6.
“CBRS-based wireless infrastructure can deliver some fairly profound cost savings and return on investment across industrial environments such as manufacturing and warehousing. Using the Celona solution, one steel manufacturer was effectively able to save up to $2.7 million a year in labour and material costs by avoiding operational disruptions they experienced using Wi-Fi.”
Kyung Mun, principal analyst at Mobile Experts
“With private cellular wireless proving to deliver a quick and compelling ROI, we believe industrial enterprises will increasingly seek Celona to augment Wi-Fi networks and take on digitizing more of their business-critical process workflows. As a result, accelerating how they do business and how fast they serve their customers.”
Özer Dondurmacıoğlu, vice president of strategic accounts at Celona
Source: Enterprise IoT Insights
