HITT- Understanding private networks and their significance- Oct 1, 2024

This HITT delves into the critical role of private networks in meeting the growing connectivity demands of modern applications. Graeme Scott introduces the topic, highlighting the global market’s rapid growth and the advantages of private networks, such as enhanced security and control. Cox representatives discuss their tailored solutions, emphasizing quick deployment and flexibility in pricing. Real-world examples illustrate the reliability of private cellular networks over traditional Wi-Fi, particularly in challenging environments. The session concludes with a call for continued engagement and learning about these essential connectivity solutions.

Introduction to Private Networks

Today’s high intensity tech training focuses on the power and opportunities for private networks, high reliability, exceptional performance, and clients who and clients decide who can use this and how. Now as connectivity needs increase along with the associated security and efficiency issues, private networks have become essential. And here with the details and some of the industry experts who provide this solution is Telarus VP for advanced networking and mobility, and to my knowledge, never a dermatologist.

Graeme Scott. Graeme, welcome back to the Tuesday call, and thanks to you and your guests for leading today’s HIT training.

Yeah. You got it, Doug. And, no. Never a dermatologist have worn a lot of hats over the years, but that is not one of them.

Really glad to be back with you. I’ve had to have a pinch hitter for the last couple of times here, but always great when you can have someone as amazing as Jason Kaufman fill in for you. So, great to be back on the hit call. Looking forward to another great session here today.

Understanding Private Networks

So, go ahead and move on there, Chandler. So we are talking about private networks today. And so what is a private network? We’re gonna dive into that, give you some details on it, and why so many companies are looking at this, alternative to traditional connectivity.

But first, let’s take a look at the market here. Every time, you know, we introduce a new technology, love to sort of level set on the opportunity that’s out there with it. As you can see, this one, like a lot of, you know, new products, IoT, etcetera, Huge. This is the global market.

This is courtesy of a group called Market and Markets.

Very interesting naming there. But as you can see, huge opportunity here. About eleven point eight billion dollars globally.

And this is actually a fairly conservative estimate if you look at all the other estimates out there. I’ve seen anywhere from eleven point eight to twenty two on some of the charts that I looked at. So I went on the conservative side here. Compound annual growth rate of around forty two and a half percent. I’ve seen that as high as fifty four percent. So what I’m you know, the reason I’m showing you this, just to show you, this is a huge opportunity. A lot of companies are starting to look at this technology for reasons, which I will will explain on the next slide, Chandler.

Connectivity Demands and Challenges

So why are companies looking at private network? Well, obviously, we know that connectivity is essential.

So many of the applications that we’re using today, everything is online, everything is in the cloud, and everything requires connectivity.

The number of devices and applications that needed is constantly growing, throwing in things like IoT devices, all of that. It is getting tremendous. The demands on the traditional network are huge. And what we’re finding is that those old networks cannot keep up.

So one large fiber pipe and a managed Wi Fi would would be sort of what we would look at as a strategy in the past. Really having issues keeping up with demands of today’s needs with connectivity, the number of devices, the types of devices, and everything that’s going on within a building. I mean, I always like to look at something like a hospital, and you think back in the day, you probably only had the nurses stations that needed to be connected. The doctors wanted some connectivity, and maybe, you know, some admin stuff.

But now you’ve got patients, you’ve got guests coming into the hospital. Not only that, but you’ve got the beds and the equipment that are all connecting to the infrastructure, and all of them have different needs and need different types of connectivity.

So one size does not fit all anymore, and I think that is what we’re seeing with new networks here. The other thing is that it needs to extend. Connectivity needs to extend beyond traditional spaces like the office or the boardroom.

People want a seamless experience when they leave the boardroom or leave their office, move to another part of the campus. They want their connectivity to go with them. So there’s a constant need for that connection to be live and to be up. And of course, you know, there’s massive gaps in coverage provided by things like Wi Fi. You know, we hear from customers all the time that they wanna look at, you know, new ways that they can make sure that they’ve got coverage throughout their facilities.

Big issues in areas where they don’t have coverage, especially for things like emergencies in warehouse and manufacturing facilities where Wi Fi can’t penetrate, and you’ve got issues with cell cell service.

And then, of course, nothing, nothing we talk about today can can go without talking about security, and that’s always a massive concern. Right? You know, who’s on our network? What are they doing? What are they accessing?

Companies wanna be able to control this. They wanna know what’s going on, and they wanna be able to control what’s going on. So let’s move to the next slide.

Benefits of Private Networks

Why use a private network? Well, number one, it’s private. Right? You control access. Only authorized users or devices can access the network, and that added security measures and infrastructure can make the data and the connections that are being shared way more secure than in a traditional environment.

Second thing here that we’re gonna move on is reliability and performance. So private networks are purpose built. And what I mean by that is that you are customizing the network to your needs. Think about that hospital example I just gave.

All of those beds, all of those, devices have different connectivity protocols that they need. And when you build out a network to meet those needs and the needs of everything else that’s going on, you’re gonna have a much more efficient and optimized network. Custom is always better. Right?

The ability to mesh different protocols for users and devices, very, very important. And then, of course, expanded coverage. I talked about emergency situations, being able to go to those areas where we need coverage. And, Chandler, you can bring that last bullet up.

Management and monitoring. Of course, hugely important for organizations.

They wanna know what’s going on. They wanna control it. And the ability to outsource the management of that will free up IT resources and optimize their budgets. We’re always hearing from our clients that they don’t have the resources, they don’t have the IT staff to manage and to keep up with the demands of today’s network.

Cox Private Network Introduction

So hopefully, I’ve done a good job of building the case why this stuff would be interesting. What I wanna do here is bring in our friends from Cox, talk about Cox private network, and how they are deploying the solution out there in the real world today. So welcome to the call. John Muscarella, good friend, and, of course, Chris Bennett with Cox private network.

John, Chris, welcome to the call. John, what did I get right? What did I get wrong? What are we looking at here?

Graeme, thank you very much. Graeme, thank you to you and Doug for having us on the call today. We really do appreciate the time and the attention from the from your tech advisers and working with them. So, really appreciate sharing this with you and agree with the Doug’s earlier comment. Thoughts and prayers out to everybody impacted by the hurricane as well. It’s a terrible event. And whatever we can do to help, you know, don’t hesitate to reach out to the Cox family, and we’ll see what we can do.

But, Graeme, you hit it on the head. You really stole a lot of my thunder on this first slide, and I appreciate that because you get the concept.

And your tech advisers are positioned with these customers in the right way to help them solve this. It’s no longer about having Wi Fi to cover a warehouse, an industrial park, because the the signal doesn’t propagate as it should in those environments. So that’s why these purpose built networks that are a mix of different technologies, public, private, WiFi, mock in, make the service work better and you have better outcomes that your customer you’re trying to support your customer with. And I think what you hear from us today is how Cox Communications, Cox business along with Cox private networks can help do this for your customers.

To help put your advisor in a better spot to help your customer with their challenge and how to solve that challenge. And that’s what we’re here to do. And I’m excited about this because this is available nationwide.

A lot of people think of Cox and go, oh, you’re the cable provider. Yes, we are. But we are a lot more than a cable provider as you know. You know, years ago, we bought rapid scale. We are one of the largest managed service providers in the country now.

We have Cox Communications, which we’re providing solutions nationwide now, and Cox Private Networks falls under that. So we’re ecstatic about this offering. And I’ll tell you what, Graeme. Early readout from your advisers, from your technical people have been this is a great solution that everybody should be aware of and take it to their customers with their appropriate needs. So we’re excited.

I’m gonna stop chatting because the wizard is here. Chris is here who knows all things private networks, and I am just a pretty face with with decent hair and not as good hair as you, Graeme. But, I wanna get Chris on here so he can start talking about what we do and why we do it. So, Chris, I’ll hand it over to you.

Cox’s Unique Approach to Private Networks

Excellent. Thank you, John. Thank you, Graeme. I appreciate, the opportunity to speak to everyone this morning. A little bit about me, I’ve, got over twenty four years in telecommunications. I started at Singular Wireless, if you remember the orange jack, back in, two thousand and, then spent eighteen years at Verizon and a couple years at NEC.

If if you jump to the next slide, what you’ll see is Cox Private Networks approach to, private networks in general is very different from that of the carriers. It’s a myriad of solutions. It’s a custom designed purpose built connectivity solution. So let me step back and ask, what is a private network?

It’s kinda like, what is AI or what is five g? All these buzzwords, but what does it really mean? A private network to me is a, a LAN connection, if you will, a wireless LAN connection in this case. And we have different options to execute that vision, and that private network means that your enterprise customers have more control, more visibility, more security, and, the ability to scale their network as they need to do so and as they see fit.

And that’s what Cox Private Networks brings to the table.

Little ways back, Cox invested over three hundred and thirty million dollars in what’s called CBRS license, licenses, their power license, their priority access licenses. We’ll get into that in a little bit as to why that’s important, but the the future is bright for private networks. And what we’re gonna discuss today is not so much why private networks are the perfect fit, but how private networks compare to Wi Fi networks. Because, obviously, Wi Fi is a standard.

Comparing Private Networks and Wi-Fi

Wi Fi is everywhere. It’s not going anywhere. It’s perfect for carpeted office environments. It’s gonna continue to be the workhorse of enterprise.

But the reality is that Wi Fi is not built for certain environments, and that’s where John mentioned earlier about manufacturing. We’ve got some case studies in a little bit that we’ll speak to as to why customers have chosen to go down the private network path, but Cox is here to help with that. So let’s take a look at the next slide.

There’s really three core tenets of our solution set and our portfolio on the Cox private network team. I’ve pasted a lot of links in the chat. There’s a great overview video. There’s solutions guides and white papers.

But the reality is private LTE and private five g are one, core area that customers are taking control of their connectivity, deploying SIM based architecture that’s not owned by the carriers. So no Verizon, no AT and T, no T Mobile in the mix. This is simply SIM based devices connecting to a network that’s owned and operated by the enterprise, not unlike a traditional Wi Fi network. The only difference is that, that network has to have a cellular connection to the device, which requires a SIM card.

And I say SIM card like, you know, it’s a nineteen ninety nine or something, but the reality is that most devices today support dual SIM. So you may have a a SIM card from your public cellular provider like AT and T or Verizon, and you have an eSIM on that device as well that could participate in a private cellular network.

You might ask, do I have to manage the distribution of physical SIM cards? No. That eSIM can act as a a QR code so that you you simply say, scan this QR code, attach to my network one time, and now you’re a registered user. So every time you enter the facility, the device automatically connects. It’s a seamless process. It’s a great, option for enterprise customers with large facilities, and we’ll talk about the coverage area and some of the benefits to private cellular in a moment.

Yeah. And just to jump in there, sorry, Chris. But for those of you guys who wanna learn more about eSIMs and vSIMs, we did a hit session on that a couple of weeks ago with Jason Kaufman. So, really, that’s a big change in the space.

It is not a physical SIM that needs to go in a lot of these devices. So great point there, Chris.

Yeah. And, you know, for customers who don’t have eSIM capable devices, we certainly supply physical SIMs, but the the suggested pass is is that QR code, scan here to register, and now you’re on the network.

For customers that are looking for public cellular service in building our neutral host public cellular option, as, John pointed out, Machin or multi operator core network is the back end. That solution rides over customer provided Internet to extend AT and T and T mobile service out to, end users. Now Verizon isn’t supported today other than nine one one services because emergency services are always supported.

Neutral Host Solutions Explained

But we are hoping and expecting Verizon to be supported in the future, and the system is future proof in a way that, there’s no truck roll. There’s no additional cost. It’s simply a firmware update and a reboot for a third carrier to be added.

But at the end of the day, what we’re seeing is our neutral host option, our mock in product, is a, alternative to a traditional DaaS or distributed antenna system. And there’s a lot of customers out there. There was a specific question in the chat about hospitality.

There’s a ton of hotels who have requested DaaS or installed DaaS, and the carriers have said, hey. Thanks, but no thanks. Even though you spent a million dollars on this distributed antenna system, we don’t wanna spend the money per month to attach to that what what the carriers call bringing signal source. And so, it’s left a lot of customers up in arms about what to do.

In many cases, they’ll shift that strategy from an active DAS to a passive DAS, meaning they’ll install a donor antenna, and then they’re just susceptible to the outdoor coverage. So whatever poor outdoor coverage exists, if it’s capacity challenged, maybe it’s near a stadium or near a busy metropolitan area, That signal’s then brought in and rebroadcast, and it looks like five bars, but it’s not really. And the experience is not good. So what we offer is a system that completely bypasses that macro cell site by standing up, a cell site in your building, if you will, and broadcasting AT and T T Mobile and soon to be Verizon.

With that said, the benefit is it rides over the customer Internet, and, it’s you’re in full control of how much backhaul and how much bandwidth is available.

The third option or solution is our wireless network extension.

Wireless network extension is essentially point to point line of sight connectivity. So this would be like microwave backhaul.

And we typically use a sixty gigahertz connection, but eighty gigahertz and six gigahertz are options.

It’s magical the way this works. It’s on a sixty gigahertz connection, we can get almost four gigs symmetrical, and symmetrical is not common. So this is a great solution for IP cameras and other solutions that are purpose built for point to point connectivity.

We’re seeing a lot of lot of this kind of merge over the last couple of weeks.

Lots of opportunity in this space still. Right? We think of it as kind of old news. Still a lot of a lot of, a lot of areas that this is a great solution for.

I mean, candidly, if we look internally at some of our teams, our sales teams, I’d say probably seventy percent of our leads come from the wireless network extension. And that’s probably because it’s so complimentary to our managed Wi Fi solutions. But the reality is, there’s just a ton of opportunity out there where folks don’t wanna have to dig up a parking lot, or they need to get across some railroad tracks, or there’s a river in the way. And they simply need to, connect to something that they can see, they just don’t have any physical means to do so.

Golf course is another great example where they they care about the aesthetics. They don’t wanna dig up. And so this is, this is our most common solution. I’d say that’s fruit falling off the trees, if you will.

Understanding Managed Services and Support

The neutral host public cellular is like the low hanging fruit, and the private cellular, while, valued the most, from a total, contract value perspective and from a return on investment perspective, those are pretty complex and custom solutions. But we’ll we’ll talk about a few ways to simplify that approach with your customers. The the best news on all of these is that they’re all they’re offered nationwide. So this isn’t something that’s only available in Cox business markets.

We are providing these services as a managed service. So we’re here from solution design to procurement, to deployment, to configuration, day two, and life cycle support.

We turn these, solutions up, in record time, whereas in the neutral host example, you’re waiting on carriers to bring signal source. You’re waiting on fiber backhaul, for those DAS systems. We don’t have to do any of that. We can turn up in weeks, not months or years. And, the fact is that, we’re gonna support that from soup to nuts because that’s what Cox does. We’re a a solution provider, a networking provider, and, Cox Private Networks is here to stay. Now one of the best parts about this is that we have a flexible pricing model as well, especially in the Nutrihose side, but also in the private cellular side.

Cost Considerations in Wireless Deployments

There are typically a lot of upfront costs. You’re talking about equipment. You’re talking about installation, licensing, which is, costing more than ever and and often overlooked.

All of those solutions are typically represented in a nonrecurring cost to your customers.

And, you know, in the in the example of a distributed antenna system, that nonrecurring cost can be significant. The monthly recurring or annual recurring might be less, but it’s still there.

What Cox has done is we have, you know, we’re twenty two billion dollar a year company, eighteen thousand plus employees on the Cox Communications side. We’re putting our money where our mouth is. We’re funding these solutions in many cases, by amortizing that nonrecurring cost over three years or five years. And that provides your customers the flexibility to choose how they pay for it. If they wanna pay all upfront for equipment and licensing and installation, we can build the solution that way. If they wanna pay a certain amount upfront, then we can meet in the middle and, and then reduce the MRC accordingly. But completely flexible pricing model.

Yeah. And I think that’s one of the things I really like about this solution is is the flexibility from a pricing standpoint. And then you talked about at the beginning is the time. Right? How quickly this can be spun up versus looking at a DaaS and waiting on the carriers.

Big difference there. I think that’s a big differentiator.

Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. Yeah.

So, Chandler, we’re looking in next slide.

As I said before, another benefit or feature is that we’re, riding over existing, elements. We’re, integrating with existing infrastructure. What does that mean? It means you don’t have to have dedicated Internet for our solutions.

You can leverage vanilla Internet or or standard Internet that’s provided, at the site. We don’t have to install, firewalls or switches or or, structured cabling. We can leverage the existing cat six Ethernet. There’s cases where we come in and maybe the PoE injectors are not PoE plus plus.

So we’ll add PoE injectors, because our cellular radios, can go up to forty watts. So they have quite a bit of power draw there. But at the end of the day, most of our customers are leveraging existing infrastructure, and that means it’s the most seamless integration possible. That’s what reduces costs and helps expedite our deployments.

Next slide.

Benefits of Private Cellular Networks

On the private cellular option, one of the questions we get too often is why, why would I choose private cellular? What are some of the the benefits?

Within a private cellular, deployment, whether it’s four g or five g, you’re gonna get control, visibility, and the the the ability to deploy where you need it, when you need it. The carriers don’t offer any of that. So if I’m talking about putting a public cellular solution into a property, I I have to depend on the carrier to fund that. I have to, you know, rely on their timeline.

I’m beholden to them. And then once that’s installed, they don’t share any of the statistics with me around, user attach rates, successful data transmissions, you know, sites that folks are going to. None of the details, of a traditional Wi Fi network are there. This the private cellular option that, Cox Private Networks has, and offers gives that control and visibility to to your enterprise customers.

So now through portals like the one you see here, you’re able to drill down into subscribers. You’re able to white list and blacklist sites. You’re able to gain access to to in internal LAN without VPN and, proprietary data. You’re able to deploy exactly where you need to deploy it without being beholden to the carrier.

And this is a a a a reason why Wi Fi networks have been so successful as well.

You know, you’ve seen, Wi Fi analytics just take off. There’s tons of opportunity around the data that’s collected from these networks. And by owning and operating your own private cellular, whether it be four g or five g, you’re able to see those subscribers, see the data, bless certain applications, restrict others, and deploy exactly where you need to deploy it.

Here you go. This is kind of the wow moment for a lot of IT teams when you’re demoing this product. Right, guys? Like, when you put this interface in front of them, they go, this is what I want. Right? So I think that’s great that we’re showing this here.

And, Graeme, that’s right. They’re in control. They can see their network. It’s their private network or a combination, and they can actually see everything going on. Chris, I’m just trying to be mindful of time, and a lot of people are asking about, tell me the case studies. Show me more. So I just wanna keep you on track so that we can get to the case studies and keep everybody interested in what you’re talking about.

Case Study: Industrial Network Transformation

Yeah. Let’s get to it. So, Chandler, if you wanna advance, one of our, most recent, deployments was a large industrial manufacturer. This was a a rail car manufacturer.

So they make trains, basically. You think about, you know, chemicals and petroleum and other stuff that’s being pulled by these locomotives, and these cargo, containers, if you will, they’re refurbished constantly. They’re brought into the factory. So this is indoor, outdoor, heavy metal, heavy machinery, like sparks flying everywhere, just really rugged environment.

But what the customer needed was a complete network transformation. They wanted IoT solutions to track some of the cargo.

They wanted point to point solutions to get over the tracks. They wanted private cellular because they had really high ceilings in this, in this factory, if you will. The and their Wi Fi access points, not only were they failing, they had, you know, many Enema enclosures to protect them from the harsh environments, but they were also, they were, not effective. There were too many gaps in Wi Fi. And that happens because you have really high ceilings, and the Wi Fi is an unlicensed in an unlicensed band. And cellular is in a licensed band, meaning it’s meaning it’s protected.

And so you’re you’re trusting your these mission critical machines to unlicensed airwaves when you’re deploying in Wi Fi. And there’s always gonna be channel contention. That could be from people’s phones or microwave or Bluetooth devices. But that channel contention, the only way to deal with that is to limit the power output.

And so that’s what the FCC has done. They’ve said power output on a Wi Fi device starts at two hundred and fifty milliwatt. That’s a quarter of a watt. Well, on a cellular device, it starts at a watt.

So that’s immediately four times the range. But what you don’t know is it goes up to forty watt in some cases where it can get a hundred and forty times the range. We have many, cases where there’s a hundred Wi Fi access points in a factory or distribution center, and we can deploy ten cellular access points and cover the same area. So not only do you have fewer devices to update and manage from a, TCO perspective, security patches, all that, you have fewer devices that are impacted by the harsh environments.

You have fewer devices to manage and, fewer devices to install. So great solution.

Cellular reaches further. It penetrates better.

It also supports mobility, wherein the next slide, you’ll see And, Chris, on on that slide, though, if you can go back, Doug, this is where the tech advisor really can play their to their advantage.

It’s a very complicated environment. It’s a complicated, environment both physically with the environment, plus what they’re trying to accomplish from an IT perspective.

This is where as an advisor, you build the trust with your customer and bringing someone in like Cox to help solve that for them.

Technology aside, we’re really here to help you support your customers more effectively, more efficiently, And this is the kind of complex solution that you should be looking for because your customer doesn’t have a clear answer on what to do.

Yeah. That’s right. You’re exactly right. Yeah, John. You’re exactly right. I mean, this is the perfect example of a bunch of different stuff going on.

And And imagine an IT team trying to manage this on their own. Right.

And you can’t do this on a commercial five g network. Verizon AT and T, T Mobile, this isn’t in their skill set. They’re great at residential and covering things, like, for residential users. You get into a harsh environment like this, they’re not gonna build a purpose built network. They’re gonna give you five g hammer and go, here you go. Whereas we’re certainly building a purpose built network for this customer.

It’s kinda it’s kinda the carrier’s job to to be bleeding edge. Right? And so if you go to the carriers and you ask them for a private network purpose built deployment, all they’re gonna do is bring five g where, again, this solution, it’s Wi Fi, it’s private cellular, it’s LoRaWAN, it’s sixty gigahertz. It’s a myriad of solutions that solve the exact customer need.

It’s not the five g hammer looking for a nail. The fact is that five g, as fast as it is, it’s three times the cost of four g in the private cellular space. So you get a twenty percent in performance gain with three x the cost. It’s not necessarily worth it.

Most applications will work fine.

You don’t always need it.

You don’t always need five g. And and in fact, in some cases, it’s a detriment. Right? You know, from That’s right.

Standpoint. Like, you’re gonna burn out your sensors. So let’s, let’s move on to the next case study here. We got a couple maybe just quickly touch on these guys, and then we wanna floor.

Case Study: Automotive Dealership Connectivity

We got a lot of questions here.

Excellent. Excellent. So this is a a large, dealership model. So in in in particular, it’s an auto auction, but we’ve seen the same solution in dealerships where they have a lot of moving parts.

Folks all over the yard, indoor, outdoor, private LTE helps them track the, the vehicle assets. It tracks it connects the tablets that are used for, merchandising and for our client telling from a customer perspective. So, again, we were able to bring this down to, you know, six week, deployment, two week validation, immediate deployment, and that was, creating a a Wi Fi mesh using private cellular across, employee use devices and customers visiting the dealership. On the next slide, you’ll see an example of a large, beverage distributor.

This, energy drinks, if you will. Similar solution, indoor warehouse distribution, a lot of metal, a lot of cans, a lot of liquid blocking Wi Fi. And, they were using laser guided vehicles or LGVs for forklifts. These autonomous forklifts, when they lost their connectivity connectivity, they would stop in the middle of the the warehouse, and somebody would have to go out and manually connect that and manually reset it.

That was because they had gaps in Wi Fi. Wi Fi has sticky client problems where you can literally be under an access point and it’s still connected to the old one. That’s because the device decides when it disconnects versus cellular, the network divide decides when it’s gonna hand off to the next AP. So much more efficient use case for mobility here.

And nobody likes to have their laser guided robot getting stuck in the warehouse. Let me tell you that. Anything with lasers is cool, but laser guided robots not working?

Millions of dollars in equipment can entrust it to an unlicensed band in Wi Fi. Wi Fi is great for carpeted office environments. Private cellular is perfect for conditions like this.

Yeah. And I think this really illustrates where we started the conversation. Right? Like, who would have thought when that technology came out that we’d be needing to run autonomous robots on it.

Right? I mean and if we think that that’s gonna slow down, the answer is no. Right? We’re Right.

You know, those of you guys who’ve seen my IoT stuff, there’s more and more and more and more of this stuff looking for connectivity, and it all requires connectivity. So having the right kind in West, as you pointed out, purpose built network is really what’s key to all this. So, John, bring us home here. How do we connect with you guys to get some more information?

And tell us about the, education program you guys just launched.

Absolutely, Graeme. Thank you. Thank you again to you and the team and the audience here for listening, and a lot of great questions. We’re gonna jump on those here in a second. First and foremost, please register your leads through Telarus like you do today for Cox Business, and we’ll route those to the right person and get them engaged.

Locally, you can reach out to your channel manager.

Breck Pribble is our alliance manager. Breck’s email addresses are there on the screen. You can reach out to him directly, and he can help coordinate. That’s the best way to get with us.

Secondly, we’ve deployed on the Clarish University some training for private networks. So it’s available now that you can go to Cox University and learn more.

And then there it is, you know, think about your customers.

We are what where are the questions you should be asking there on the left? Do they have areas that need better connectivity and too difficult to service?

Are there are there issues where high mobility and the spread over large areas that they’re losing connectivity to? So we use those questions to kind of think through this, and then we’re trying to keep everybody engaged. So the first ten qualified opportunities that we register, you’re gonna get a Cox private network swag bag, and that bag is great stack full of stuff that you’re gonna want to go represent the brand and be out there selling the service.

So those are the three things I would tell you, and I would love to get to the questions and talk more about what we’re doing.

Love it, guys. Thank you so much. Another question. Are they planning on adding autonomous robots to their, business in the next little bit? Right?

I love that. So Laser guided. Laser guided. So, Doug, what do we got, what do we got going on in the chat?

Laser guided or autonomous robots. Gotta love it. First appearance of that phrase on the Tuesday call. And I gotta give a quick shout out to Breck Pribble.

He’s the, Cox National Alliance partnership manager. He’s been answering a lot of these questions in the background on the chat. Breck, we appreciate you being part of the call today as well. Many of the questions that came in right at the start had to do with availability of this service.

Service Availability and Market Focus

Talk just a little bit, if you would, about, domestic versus Canada or other international availability, and then any of the technical requirements that might immediately prevent a potential customer from taking this type of service on.

Yeah. We’re, we’re first on availability, we’re focused on the US for now.

And the part of the reason for that is CBRS, the, airwaves that we broadcast on. Three point five gigahertz. It’s it’s only available in a few countries.

Mexico has an an another option, which is band seventy eight for low cost licensing. But the reality is the target audience today is the US. It’s not just Cox business markets, though. It’s coast to coast.

We do have solutions in Canada and Mexico that we will work through partners on. So if you’re interested and you have that, we can point you in the right direction.

And as far as why customers might not do this, I think the cost is the biggest objection in most cases. They’ll budget for Wi Fi networks, which can be economical, but a good enterprise Wi Fi deployment with analytics and and the security and controls that you get from a private cellular connection will cost similar, similarly from a TCO perspective. Again, more APs, more management, more people to control it. So overall, the cost is one objection. We try to take care of that through the amortization and the monthly recurring versus the upfront.

Advantages of Private Networks Over Third-Party Carriers

And every place else is fair game. That’s a great answer. I wanna go back to Derek’s question just a second. There was some question and concern about what are the advantages of using the private Cox network setup versus third party carrier or other arrangements that might need to be made?

Yeah. So I think, when you talk about, carrier private networks, again, they’re gonna come at everything with a five g lens, so that it is gonna cost three times more in most cases. And, also, if you’re talking about neutral host, the carriers have solutions where they’re anchor tenants. And so the customer has to pay for the solution, the in building solution, to improve public cellular service, but you’re trusting that to one of three carriers.

That shouldn’t be the case. You should use an agnostic third party to do to do that. And also on the private cellular side, one that can scale beyond just private cellular that we can include the LoRaWAN for IoT. We can include the point to point to get past any backhaul challenges, and that’s where Cox Private Networks comes in with a myriad of solutions.

Connectivity Challenges and Considerations

We harp on connectivity all the time. And for those of us that have been in the business for a while, we many of us started selling connectivity. And now we’re working, that same, solution set for an entirely different set of reasons. And I love the fact that you brought up in the, call that sometimes the reasons are technological, sometimes they’re aesthetic. And when we talk about, you know, having to go across railroad tracks, having to go across a river, having to cover a golf course, whatever it may be, These are important considerations that a lot of folks who’ve been fighting connectivity problems for a long time haven’t taken into consideration.

Talk about the, the falling off the branches fruit that’s out there in terms of those opportunities.

Yeah. I think the point to point connectivity, whether it’s the aesthetics or whether it’s, you know, regulatory challenges of getting approval to hang on light poles or lamp posts or dig or trench in certain cities or areas, there’s a lot of challenges when it comes to special construction, and there’s a lot of delays. Frankly, delays cost money. If we’re talking about retail, I said retail and hospitality is one target audience earlier. But retail, if they have to delay opening a store six or eight weeks, that’s real money, real impact. And so we can come in with a solution that’s point to point, that, you know, bypasses that fiber requirement.

Point-to-Point Connectivity Solutions

And then a lot a lot of those same locations will use, IP cameras for security and loss prevention. And those, cameras, because it’s almost all upload, they’re not built for traditional networks, whether it be Wi Fi or cellular or otherwise because those networks are asymmetrical. It’s like, like the Internet. You send a URL, which is very small.

You download a whole web page, which is very big. And so asymmetrical is very common. Uploads are almost always less than download. But in a point to point connection, we can because we control the frame structure, we can actually dedicate ninety percent of that connection to upload if that’s what they want.

So security cameras, great solution on point to point connectivity.

Telga, I wanna go back to something you said there when you mentioned it. You know, a lot of us started with connectivity.

That’s all this is. Right? I mean, it’s it really, that’s just kinda changing as the what and the why. They’re different things connecting, but when we start talking about CBRE and all these different acronyms, sometimes we lose sight.

Custom Connectivity Solutions for Businesses

This is just custom connectivity. That’s it. Going in, looking at the business, what do they need specifically for them, and putting together a solution that makes sense for them. We talked about some big opportunities in the case studies.

But, John, maybe last question for the day. You guys also do some sort of medium and smaller types, deployments as well, right, to, you know, these kind of situations. Obviously, customers need a budget, but it doesn’t have to be a massive nine, you know, five million square foot warehouse. It can be something a little smaller too.

Graeme, that’s correct. We will service customers of all shapes and sizes. We gave you the case studies for some bigger entities that give you the flavor for the complexity in those environments.

So we’re happy to talk to your our advisers here on their various needs that they have, and learn more about their business and how they’re doing it and so forth. At the end of the day, we wanna help your advisers help their customers and provide them with better information, better intelligence so that they can be more, meaningful, have a better relationship with their customer. And this is an a new offering that we have that we think we know is getting a lot of traction in the space. I mean, every show we’ve been to this year, we’ve talked about Cox private networks.

Advisor Community Response and Market Demand

The tech advisors have been all over it. They’re like, wow, this is a great need. Yes. I’ve got customers who want it. I understand the complexity of their environment and the various tech technologies being deployed. So this has been really impressive from I’ve I’ve seen a lot of uptake from the advisor community on wanting to learn more about this.

And the, compounded growth rate helps as well that there’s gonna be a lot of opportunity out there for this too.

Fantastic presentation. Graeme, John, Chris, terrific information.

We will continue to have the chat window open. If you’ve got additional questions, go ahead and put those in there. Good folks from Cox and Graeme will be responding to those as we finish out today’s call, but terrific presentation. Don’t forget the training materials that are in your Telarus University. A lot more information about these solutions and the case studies involved with them. Guys, thanks so much for the presentation today.

Thank you very much. Thank you for the time, and thank you for the audience. Appreciate it.