Private 5G Market Nears Mainstream With $5 Billion Surge, Says SNS Telecom & IT

According to SNS Telecom & IT’s latest research, private 5G networks are rapidly moving toward mainstream adoption, with annual spending forecast to exceed $5 billion by 2028. Long viewed as the successor to private LTE, private 5G is gaining traction across industries as enterprises invest in connectivity for automation, digital transformation, and advanced industrial use cases.

Unlike LTE, private 5G – also known as Mobile Private Networks (MPNs) – delivers superior performance in throughput, latency, reliability, and device density, while offering a future-proof path to 6G. These capabilities are already driving deployments among major industrial and enterprise leaders including Airbus, Ford, Toyota, Tesla, Walmart, John Deere, Hyundai, Equinor, and Lufthansa.

China leads adoption, supported by state-backed initiatives and large-scale rollouts across factories, mines, ports, and energy facilities. Some installations already comprise hundreds to thousands of RAN nodes, leveraging advanced features such as 5G RedCap for cost-efficient IoT and 5G-Advanced capabilities like deterministic networking and tri-band connectivity for autonomous vehicles. Chinese vendors are now exporting expertise to markets including Thailand and South Africa.

Globally, enterprises in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific are applying private 5G to use cases ranging from autonomous mobile robots, AR-guided maintenance, and machine vision to remote-controlled cranes, live broadcast production, and defense operations. As spectrum liberalization opens access, organizations are deploying networks through operators, integrators, or direct procurement.

With early adopters reporting measurable efficiency gains, cost savings, and safety improvements, private 5G is positioned as a critical enabler of Industry 4.0, IIoT, and next-generation enterprise digitization.