By Muhammad J Khan, Mohamed Daoud, Joerg Ahrweiler & Hossam Hmimy, Charter Communications
Enterprises are looking for dedicated wireless networks that offer better control, which can be used to solve operational challenges. Private LTE and 5G networks offer reliability, ubiquitous coverage, high user capacity, and built-in security. Private networks combined with multi-access edge computing (MEC) also give the ability for enterprises to keep data on premises and implement use cases that require low latency.
Over the last year, Charter Communications has continued to work with CBRS spectrum in the private networks space. Charter has evaluated various vendor solutions for private LTE/5G networks. In addition, we have also deployed a private LTE network in a large manufacturing plant in Michigan and have plans to work with customers in other verticals. In this paper, we explain the main motivation behind deploying a private LTE/5G network and how it can be implemented. Second, we present different use cases that can be served by this network in the industrial, healthcare, and education verticals. Third, we show the criteria for vendor selection in our lab evaluation. Fourth, we illustrate the deployment of our first private LTE network in a factory.