Private wireless RAN revenues were up 40% in 2023

This revenue hike propelled the private wireless space to comprise around 2% of the overall RAN market last year, we’re told.

The ‘evolving scope’ of private wireless combined with ‘the fact that the $20 billion+ enterprise RAN opportunity remains largely untapped’ is spurring interest from a broad array of participants across the ecosystem, says the report. This is presumably a reference to Open RAN, and the prospect of more companies sniffing around the market.

However, it was the traditional RAN suppliers who are ‘currently well-positioned in this initial phase’ – or in other words who made money last year in this market. The top three providers overall were, unsurprisingly, Huawei, Nokia, and Ericsson. Excluding China, they were Nokia, Ericsson, and Samsung.

In terms of the technology mix, 5G is dominating in China, while LTE is dominating outside of China. Dell’Oro expects private 5G RAN revenues to reach the $1 billion to $2 billion range by 2028.

“Although public RAN is still fuelling the lion’s share of the overall RAN capex and the overall investment levels are tracking below some of the initial projections provided by the vendors in the early part of the 5G enterprise hype cycle, the fact of the matter is that private wireless is now growing at a formidable pace,” said Stefan Pongratz, Vice President at Dell’Oro Group. “This stands in contrast to public RAN and enterprise WLAN – both segments are projected to contract in 2024,” continued Pongratz.

The industry is now past the hype phase and in a better place from a forecasting perspective, we’re told.

Total private wireless RAN revenues are projected to grow at a 21% CAGR over the next five years, while public RAN revenues are set to decline at a 2% CAGR over the same time period. The report notes that its overall position on the market has not changed – in that private wireless is a ‘massive opportunity’, but it will take some time for enterprises to embrace it.

In a similar vein, a Telecoms.com 5G survey report published last year listed enterprise private networks as 5G’s top monetisation capability.