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Verizon unveils its first neutral host private 5G deal with Cummins
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Verizon will work with Ericsson to build out the massive Cummins plant in upstate New York
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But will major operators sign on for neutral host agreements?
Verizon Business has revealed its first customer for its new neutral host product, which combines a neutral host network with a private 5G network.
Cummins Inc. is tapping Verizon as the technical lead and anchor tenant for a combo network to be deployed at its Jamestown engine plant in Lakewood, New York. The engine plant has 1 million square feet of industrial space and 1 million square feet of outdoor space and its 1,500 employees produce approximately 500 heavy-duty truck engines each day. Clearly, a large-scale industrial site.
Verizon will be responsible for the engineering, implementation, equipment and ongoing maintenance and performance of the onsite equipment at the plant. Ericsson will be the sole equipment vendor.
This is the first neutral host deal for Verizon. Ericsson defines a neutral host as "a company that owns indoor telecom network equipment and allows one or more communication service providers to use that infrastructure to serve their customers." The vendor also noted that mobile operators can deploy neutral host systems and invite their peers to connect.
One of the major business challenges that Cummins was facing was that, “They don’t have a system today whereby all of their employees can get the same level of signal across all carriers," Jennifer Artley, SVP of 5G acceleration, Verizon Business told Fierce. Hence the requirement for a neutral host system, so that if employees need to make emergency calls inside or outside the facility the call will be received.
Previously, Fierce heard from some vendors at Mobile World Congress this year that E911 coverage was increasingly becoming a concern for large enterprises looking at private 5G.
Eric McClanahan, director of solutions architecture of 5G Acceleration, Verizon Business, told us that Cummins is supplementing its Wi-Fi infrastructure with 5G to improve coverage for its manufacturing robots on the factory floor. He noted that that better coverage meant that robots didn’t suddenly stop because of lost data packets.
Verizon has previously highlighted the relation between industrial robots, Wi-Fi and private 5G, the latter of which the operator feels is needed to support robots on the factory floor.
“This seems to be co-primary — an upfront pitch for both enterprise IoT/employee connectivity and neutral host public coverage on multiple networks,” commented Disruptive Analysis founder Dean Bubley in a LinkedIn post.
We asked the Verizon how it would handle onboarding onto other operator’s neutral host networks.
“In any given scenario, we'd evaluate the setting, circumstances, setup, etc and make a decision based on what we think would deliver an optimal experience for our customers. It would really depend on the specifics of the implementation, and we'd make an informed decision from there,” the operator said.
So, the answer is maybe, we guess!