Summary Bullets:

• Vodafone has now delivered more than 100 mobile private networks (MPNs), most of which are now in production environments.

• Vodafone’s MPN portfolio incorporates hybrid networks and slicing, but most production deployments include a dedicated, on-premises component – although MEC demand remains limited.

Vodafone Business provided an update to analysts in May 2024 on what Vodafone calls its 5G edge. For the most part, this refers to its dedicated MPN offering, but also incorporates hybrid MPN and mobile edge compute (MEC) solutions.

Good News, Bad News
Starting off with a kind of ‘good news, bad news’ narrative, Vodafone acknowledges a slowdown in demand for MPNs, but it insisted – convincingly – that the market is getting more “real.” Specifically, far fewer new deployments are small-scale proofs of concept (PoCs). Most are for production environments, with quite a few covering several customer sites, but even new PoCs are more serious – with definite use cases defined, even in multiple locations. To drive the point home regarding the increasing maturity of MPNs in the field, Vodafone has also shared several examples of deployments, which were initially intended for a single use case, but are now expanding to serve additional use cases for their customers.

Vodafone confirms that 5G edge so far is mainly serving multinational companies (MNCs) and other large enterprises with custom requirements, particularly in industrial verticals including manufacturing, energy/utilities, transportation, and logistics. The details Vodafone has given on its installed base illustrate a definite increase since the last time it communicated numbers. Vodafone now claims 112 MPN deployments (80 of which are in production environments) for 58 unique customers on five continents. Because of what it sees as a slowdown in demand (with the exception being for complex, large-scale requirements), this is what Vodafone is focusing on now – Vodafone is building its portfolio and positioning accordingly.

Such opportunities involve lengthy requests for proposal (RFPs) presenting numerous, often unique, challenges spanning local regulations, spectrum availability, and technology needs, not to mention the wholly non-uniform characteristics of customer locations and use cases. Vodafone highlights its deep experience in solving such challenges, and Vodafone positions its offering as a managed service capable of delivering multi-vendor, multi-geography solutions, partnering where it makes sense outside of its own operating footprint to accommodate large MNCs. Portfolio options are defined for those with extremely strict on-premises requirements, those with roaming needs, and other hybrid situations, all supported with a Vodafone management plane for managed services.

5G Focus
An increasing number of Vodafone’s recent and in-progress MPN deployments are 5G-based, with some based on 5G standalone – ‘bucking the trend’ globally of MPNs based on 4G/LTE. It has found little cost difference in rolling out 5G compared to 4G, noting that devices so far account for a relatively small portion of overall project cost. Dedicated private networks are still in demand for complex industrial use cases, but there has been an increase in hybrid private/public architectures and network slicing from the public network to meet specific customer requirements. Vodafone notes that the latter is the fastest way to deploy a campus network, and that it can provide either local or national coverage with its public network assets. The network slice (local or national) offering will be part of the same portfolio as dedicated MPNs, which is the right move to make. It’s important that mobile operators present all options together as part of a logical portfolio, despite the differences in ownership and service models, so that customers don’t need to decide on an architecture before engaging with them (and can therefore focus on their required business outcomes) and so that operators don’t miss out on opportunities where different parts of the company are selling and supporting different enterprise 5G products. While Vodafone has said its network slicing capability “is real and we are doing it today,” it has also said its first commercial offer will be rolled out (in one of its European markets) later in 2024.

MEC Update
Vodafone was early with distributed and public MEC (with Amazon Wavelength in the UK and Germany) as well as private or dedicated edge compute, but like other providers, it has discovered limited demand so far. For most MPN use cases today, the very low latency and local data storage enabled by private MECs aren’t necessarily the highest priority. Like other providers, Vodafone anticipates use cases served by MPNs will get increasingly demanding, creating a pull-through effect for MECs as well as Vodafone’s deep IIoT capabilities – but even if that’s true, enterprises may have their own approaches to on-premises compute that don’t involve their mobile network provider. In its update, Vodafone did provide several case studies demonstrating there is at least some customer activity on this front, emphasizing its edge innovation program for developers looking to leverage either distributed or dedicated MEC, and its edge labs, which provide practical access to its engineering resources and ecosystem partners. A few actual commercial MEC deployments have been noted in non-industrial sectors like media and sports as well as manufacturing. And while much of the activity taking place through Vodafone’s edge programs is still about learning what customers really need, Vodafone says that in the process, it has learned how to better communicate its MEC architecture, making it easier to show customers how the architecture actually works.