A recent 5G private networks announcement is of greater significance than it might appear at first glance. The launch of a 5G-SA private network in Taiwan was important as much for who is not involved as who is. Manufacturing company Inventec has turned up a 5G network to support industrial automation on a live production line. So what’s so special about this news? Private Networks: 5G’s Killer App? There has been lots of noise about 5G. It will upend the world, power self driving cars, deliver gigabytes to your iPhone 13, support VR from remote locations and give life to fights between Marcus Weldon and Elon Musk. But here’s the problem: only the last of these is occurring in the near term. Most of the sexiest use cases for 5G suffer from run-ins with the laws of physics and economics and will only be realized over time. Today, and for the next few years the industry will only succeed through a focus on more mundane solutions that don’t demand 100s of 1000s of tiny millimeter wave cells supporting URLLC over wide geographies – such as highways and byways. Inventory tracking, analytics, and non-real-time instrumentation are already being deployed, using lower […]