Dell'Oro Group, in a brief press release, said private wireless radio access network (RAN) shipments and revenues were again coming in below expectations, resulting in a "near-term downgrade."

The analyst firm now projects that annual revenue from private wireless LTE/5G small cells – hardware only – will reach between $800 million and $1 billion by the end of its 2022-26 forecast period.

"We have chopped the small cell portion of private wireless by about a fifth throughout the forecast period," Stefan Pongratz, VP and analyst with Dell'Oro, told Light Reading.

Figure 1: Slow progress means a sharp adjustment downwards for hardware revenue from private LTE/5G small-cell networks.
(Source: Pixabay)

"This is in part because we have received new data suggesting the starting point is a bit lower than we initially modeled. In addition to the different absolute levels, the progress over the past six months has disappointed somewhat."

"To be clear," added Pongratz, "the demand for private wireless is growing but just not as fast as we initially expected."

Looking longer term to the 2030 horizon Pongratz believed that the total addressable market for private wireless networks was still a "large market opportunity" but will take some time to realize its full potential.

"Keeping in mind that it took more than ten years for enterprise WLAN to reach 5% to 10% of the projected 2026 installed base, it would be extremely optimistic to assume we would get to 100% adoption in just 10 years with private 5G," he said.

According to Dell'Oro, total private wireless RAN revenues – including macro and small cells &ndash are projected to roughly double between 2022 and 2026.

Hyperscaler action

Private wireless networking continues to grab headlines, however, not least through hyperscalers trying to muscle into the market.

Last month, Google officially unveiled its own 5G private wireless networking offering with the aim of selling it directly to enterprise customers.

Want to know more? Sign up to get our dedicated newsletters direct to your inbox.

Google positioned the service as an alternative to corporate Wi-Fi networks that might not meet enterprise customers' needs for reliability, security and coverage.

Amazon Web Services threw its hat into the private wireless network ring last November, announcing its AWS Private 5G offering.

Related posts:

&mdash Ken Wieland, contributing editor, special to Light Reading