- Verizon unveils a private 4G/5G network in a box
- It supports up to 50 cellular radios
- It’s aimed at enterprise users, sports venues and remote production uses
One private networking box to rule them all? Verizon is certainly hoping so.
The operator has just unveiled its first private networking in a box system. A Verizon spokesperson told Fierce that the prototype product is intended to serve “a variety of sectors including sports and venues, remote production in media and entertainment, enterprise, and more.”
Verizon has already used this portable prototype at last weekend’s United Footlball League (UFL) championship game at the Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, Missouri and has shipped similar boxes to Sao Paulo, Brazil; London, United Kingdom; and Munich, Germany to provide connectivity for the National Football League (NFL) game-play operations, enabling real-time support for on-field coach-to-coach communications at this fall’s overseas American football games.
Verizon’s so-called Network in a Box (NIB) can scale to support up to 50 cellular radios, can utilize shared or licensed spectrum and in-venue or on-premise fiber connections to generate private cellular connectivity for customers. “Here’s the beauty of this solution – it’s highly modular in nature and can support a variety of services based on the needed use cases,” the Verizon spokesperson said. “So yes, it can support both 4G and 5G. We can use our owned spectrum, or – when deploying overseas – we can use a variety of spectrum available wherever this is being deployed.”
Other smaller vendors have also started to launch 5G private NIB systems. The Verizon NIB is quite ambitious, however, with its support for up to 50 cellular radios in the box.
“Multiple vendor components are in this one designed and built by Verizon engineers to meet specifications of the use case intended,” the spokesperson told us. “No commercial details yet as we are currently deploying currently in select commercial environments showcasing the technology.”
Who made the NIB components?
“The 50 radios is an interesting limit,” Roy Chua, principal at AvidThink, speculated in an email. “50 Radios is Nokia’s NDAC [digital automation for industrial campus] Core medium capability bundle. This, along with the recent article you wrote about Nokia and Verizon, could mean it’s Nokia.”
“But there’s other providers’ private 4G/5G solutions that Verizon’s worked with beyond Nokia: Ericsson, Celona, etc,” Chua said. “Given this solution supports shared and licensed spectrum, that likely precludes Celona.”
“JMA Wireless is the other solution provider typically found at venues – they sell their distributed antenna systems (DAS) solutions into many venues like Las Vegas Sphere. They also have a private 5G solution, but we haven’t seen any announcements between JMA and Verizon beyond DAS arrangements,” Chua concludes.
So, let’s see what’s next in the box for 5G private networking after this.
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