Who builds private networks

Nokia is selling its campus unit while the customer count still rises

Nokia files a count of its private wireless customers each year and Ericsson does not, so Nokia’s is the only run of comparable figures from a vendor. It has risen in each of the four years it has been filed (Exhibit 1).

The 20-F for 2022 recorded “more than 560 private wireless customers, 118 with 5G”. A year later the figure was more than 710, with 159 on 5G and 150 new campus customers added during the year. For 2024 it was more than 850, with 193 on 5G, and for 2025 “over 1 000 private wireless customers”, this time with no 5G figure. That works out at about 150 new customers a year, with 5G a steady fifth of the total. The reports name four American deals: Dow’s chemical complex at Freeport, Texas, built with Kyndryl; Xcel Energy’s grid modernisation; Southern California Edison; and the City of Brownsville, Texas, with NTT Data.

Nokia then decided to sell. From 1 January 2026 it moved Enterprise Campus Edge into a group it calls “Portfolio Businesses”, units “not seen as core to the future of the company’s strategy”. Its second-quarter report of 23 July 2026 went further and classified the unit as discontinued operations, alongside the fixed wireless CPE business it had agreed to sell to Inseego. Nokia “deems it highly probable it will reach an agreement to sell Enterprise Campus Edge business”. Nokia means to keep the wide-area work. Its chief executive, Justin Hotard, told investors in November 2025 that Nokia would “continue to serve mission-critical enterprise, which are things like utilities and rail”, as Fierce Network reported. By 7 October 2026 no buyer had been named. The count was still rising when the decision to sell was taken; in our view the count and the economics had parted company some time before.

Ericsson’s private 5G sales fell in 2025

Ericsson files no customer count, but its segment figures say enough. The 2025 annual report puts the Enterprise segment at 9% of group sales, down 15% to SEK 21.1 billion. Within it, sales in Enterprise Wireless Solutions “declined slightly, mainly due to lower sales in private 5G solutions”. A year earlier they had grown 17% on “good demand for private 5G and neutral host solutions”. The same report took a SEK 77 million impairment on an intangible asset in that business “due to a change in strategy”. The chief executive’s letter nonetheless described the private 5G market as “starting to industrialize” and pointed to Airbus in Hamburg.

Dell’Oro, which measures the market from outside, sees the same slowdown. It put private wireless RAN growth at 16% in 2025, nearly 2.5 times slower than the year before, and sized the whole market at 3 to 5% of RAN revenue. Nokia and Ericsson between them hold about 80% of it outside China. The analyst has revised its campus outlook down and its wide-area outlook up, which is the same split Nokia drew when it chose what to keep (Exhibit 2).

The pattern is the same at both vendors: the customer counts rose and the appetite fell. Nokia expects to sell its campus unit with the count still rising and is keeping utilities and rail. Ericsson’s private 5G sales fell in 2025. The analyst has cut the campus outlook and raised the wide-area one. In our view a buyer should read that as the vendors saying where they think the money is.

Both cloud companies have withdrawn their private 5G services

In 2022 a cloud provider’s core looked like the easy way into private 5G, and by the end of 2025 both providers had left. AWS listed AWS Private 5G among services that had “reached their end of support date, and can no longer be accessed” on 20 May 2025. Microsoft set Azure Private 5G Core to retire on 30 September 2025 and pointed its customers to partner products, Nokia’s and Ericsson’s among them. Google retired its CBRS planning tool in 2024, as reported, and its spectrum database closes in June 2027 (part 1). An American start-up has broadened its line too. Celona, which reports more than $135 million in funding, now sells Wi-Fi access points and Starlink integration beside its 4G and 5G radios, under the slogan “Agentic. Converged. Wireless.”

There have been seven withdrawals since 2022 (Exhibit 3). What is left on the supply side is the two large European vendors, one of which expects to sell its campus unit; the integrators that resell them; the carriers; and start-ups that now sell Wi-Fi as well. An enterprise that bought a network in 2022 on a cloud provider’s core has since watched its suppliers leave.

Utilities hold the only contract values on file

Utility broadband is the one corner of private wireless where contract values are filed. It runs on spectrum the utilities lease or buy, and the figures are in the seller’s accounts.

Anterix holds the largest share of the 900 MHz band, 896 to 901 and 935 to 940 MHz, and sells or leases broadband licences in it to utilities. The broadband segment widened this year: on 18 February 2026 the FCC adopted an order widening the broadband segment from 3×3 to 5×5 MHz, as Anterix’s 10-K records. Its 12 agreements with 11 utilities add up to $413.1 million (Exhibit 4). Leases account for $192.4 million of that and sales for $220.7 million, and the mix has shifted: every agreement since 2024 has been a sale.

The private wireless money on file in the United States is utilities buying licensed channels: $413.1 million contracted with one spectrum holder across 11 utilities, on top of the PALs the same kind of buyer took at auction. No carrier or vendor discloses private-network revenue to set beside it.

Carriers sell private networks and do not count them

All three national carriers sell private networks, and none of them says how many. Verizon’s 10-K says it uses both PALs and GAA in the band and lists private networks among its network technologies, with no customer count and no revenue. AT&T’s and T-Mobile’s 10-Ks have neither. The product pages are more forthcoming than the filings. Verizon’s names Nucor, Associated British Ports and a 500,000 square foot warehouse near Dallas where GSM Outdoors reports a 66% productivity gain. AT&T’s still describes its offer as “a non-public wireless LTE (5G coming soon) network”. Charter, which paid $464.3 million for 210 PALs, intends to use them for a data-only mobile network of its own on small cells.

The global count comes from GSA, the vendors’ association. By the end of the second quarter of 2026 it had identified 2,031 organisations in 88 countries deploying private mobile networks under contracts worth more than €100,000. Customer references have grown 37% a year since 2019, and 5G is more than half of the deployments announced since 2022. The latest quarter carries two caveats: one vendor did not contribute and another made a partial submission. GSA says the two would have been 20 to 30% of the quarter’s expected references, so the most recent figure is low by about that much.

Reported GSA, Private Mobile Networks, September 2026, and key data page (data to 22 Sep 2026)

The named American networks run on three kinds of spectrum

Eleven American networks are named in a filing, in the FCC record or in the trade press (Exhibit 5). Three spectrum choices run through them, and in each case the reason is on the record.

• The open tier. An enterprise that wants a network without a licence uses GAA. APM Terminals explained why to the FCC: GAA let it “avoid sinking resources into spectrum acquisition costs or competing at auction for a license area that was not well suited to our needs”.
• A channel of their own. Utilities buy PALs, or buy or lease 900 MHz, because they want a channel nobody else may use.
• Carrier spectrum. Where the job is coverage for the public, the network runs on a carrier’s licensed spectrum, or on CBRS with the carriers’ consent. Who pays for that is the subject of part 3.

Terms used

• Private wireless. Nokia’s term, and the industry’s, for an LTE or 5G network run for one organisation’s own devices and applications rather than for the public.
• Campus and wide-area. A campus network covers one site, such as a factory, a port or a university. A wide-area network covers a territory, such as a utility’s service area or a railway.
• Discontinued operations. An accounting classification for a business a company has decided to sell or close. Its results are reported separately from continuing operations.
• Spectrum lease and sale. Under a lease the licence stays with the holder and the user pays over a term. Under a sale the licence transfers to the user.