Private 5G is gaining traction. Cisco and NTT want to drive its adoption in the automotive, logistics, healthcare, retail and public sectors.

Co-innovate and jointly commercialize the technologies and managed services that will enable large enterprises to successfully deploy private 5G. Cisco and NTT plan to develop edge connectivity via the first-to-market NTT Managed Private 5G solution with Intel hardware, so that Cisco and NTT customers can seamlessly integrate private 5G into their pre-existing LAN/WAN/cloud infrastructure.

Together, Cisco and NTT will be able to quickly enable critical capabilities for Industry 4.0: Push-to-Talk communications (like walkie-talkies), automated guided vehicles (AGVs), always-connected PCs (for field workers), machine vision (e.g., for predictive maintenance, personal protective equipment detection), and more.

5G and Wi-Fi, IT and OT…

The two companies have already started coordinating on several customer deployments. In addition, they plan to facilitate computer vision for product quality control, predictive analytics for proper operation and maintenance of manufacturing equipment, or autonomous carts on the shop floor, leveraging NTT’s connected IoT solutions.

“Together with NTT, we aim to help our enterprise customers accelerate their digital transformation, putting the power of 5G and Wi-Fi at the service of their IT and OT operations,” said Masum Mir, SVP and general manager Provider Mobility, Cisco Networking. “Our private managed 5G offering in the cloud provides customers with seamless integration with their enterprise network as well as common policies and security architecture based on the Zero Trust model. This helps reduce the technical, financial and operational risks associated with managing 5G networks and enables enterprises to gain agility and efficiency.”

Purely private and easy to manage

It is a natural extension of the industry-leading capabilities and services NTT brings to market to help customers around the world modernize their businesses. “NTT and Cisco continue their mutual commitment to deliver a purely private, easy-to-manage network solution,” said Shahid Ahmed, EVP New Ventures & Innovation at NTT. “As NTT is a preferred systems integration partner of Cisco, our two companies are well positioned to deliver a secure, reliable and future-proof private 5G network for our joint customers with a global footprint.“

For Cisco’s private 5G offering, NTT will handle network infrastructure design, deployment, operations management, use case development, equipment procurement, compatibility as well as comprehensive testing.