Today, Google Cloud announced a new private network portfolio. Google’s new offering is built upon Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) Edge, and the company is working with a number of well-known vendors to help deliver turn-key private networks.
The cloud giant has partnered with Betacom, which will deploy its fully managed 5G-as-a-Service on GDC Edge, giving enterprises access to private 5G networks to support intelligent manufacturing applications.
Google Cloud will use Boingo Wireless to deploy its fully managed, end-to-end private cellular networks for enterprise customers using GDC Edge at major airports, stadiums, hospitals, manufacturing facilities and U.S. military bases.
It’s also working with Celona’s 5G LAN technology to automate rollouts of private cellular networks that are tightly integrated with existing security and quality-of-service policies.
For communications infrastructure, including wireless infrastructure and fiber networks, Google Cloud is partnering with Crown Castle.
And it’s working with Kajeet, which will deploy its 5G solution on GDC Edge with a mission to connect students and communities with high-speed wireless internet to eliminate the digital divide.
According to a blog by Amol Phadke, GM for the Global Telecom Industry at Google Cloud, people want private wireless networks to replace Wi-Fi in myriad use cases. For example, Wi-Fi can be noisy and deliver inconsistent performance in terms of both latency and bandwidth, which impacts its ability to deliver real-time applications like video monitoring and robotic manufacturing. It’s also hard to use Wi-Fi to provide capacity and coverage in large areas like entertainment venues. Wi-Fi is not well-suited for connecting large numbers of sensors and IoT devices. And in places where a connected device is on the move, like in a warehouse or distribution center, Wi-Fi doesn’t offer the seamless connectivity that workers and vehicles require.
The Google Cloud blog says that its private wireless offering is “powered by Anthos,” which is its platform that lets companies run applications consistently across on-premises data centers and multiple public clouds.
In terms of spectrum, Padke wrote, “Our partnerships with communications service providers further enable enterprises with roaming connectivity while retaining control of their private environments.”
He noted that several countries including the U.S., U.K., Germany, Japan and South Korea allocate spectrum for private networking.
In fact, in the U.S. Google has been a leader in private wireless in terms of spectrum, but it's lagged AWS and Microsoft Azure as far as offering a turn-key private wireless solution.
Google’s Principle Wireless Architect Preston Marshall was a major proponent of the move to get Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum auctioned for private wireless usage. And Google is one of the spectrum access system (SAS) administrators for CBRS.