Campus Networks: From Idea to Impact (Part 1)

Critical operations don’t buy "speed"; they buy continuity. When scanners freeze, cameras stutter, or robots pause mid-route, the business bleeds. That is why leaders are turning to private wireless as the connective tissue that keeps operations moving on the worst day, not just the best. 

And the warehouse story is no longer hypothetical. Lufthansa Industry Solutions, working with Ericsson, reports that private 5G steadied handheld scanning and AI-powered inspections by keeping uplink consistent and handovers clean where Wi-Fi kept flaking. It is the kind of everyday continuity ops teams actually pay for. 

Recognizing this, suppliers are now meeting the demand with kits that companies can buy and expand over time. Siemens, for example, has extended its private-5G offer for Industry 4.0, now supporting up to 24 radio units (about 5,000 m² per unit) and selling in Austria, Brazil, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. 

Beyond industry 4.0: Where startups can play

Private 5G has already proven itself in controlled industrial settings, but the more exciting story starts when those principles are carried into entirely new arenas. For startups, the opportunity isn’t in the mega factories of Industry 4.0, where big players will keep dominating. It lies in the creativity of how and where campus networks are applied. 

Deployments by giants like Ericsson, Newmont, and Aker BP show the technology working in the toughest environments. For founders, that is an open invitation to learn from these extreme cases and reimagine how private networks could be adapted, scaled down, or repackaged into new services and markets. 

To see what this looks like in practice, let’s explore three very different environments where private networks are already being pushed to the limit. 

When sports become a network playground

SailGP is sometimes called the Formula 1 of sailing, with boats flying across the water at nearly 100 km/h, each packed with hundreds of sensors. Every race generates torrents of real-time data: performance metrics, AI-driven analytics, and live broadcast feeds expected by fans worldwide. Public 5G can’t guarantee that level of performance over open water, and Wi-Fi simply sinks under the load. 

That’s where Ericsson stepped in. For the 2025 season, the company is supplying private 5G and edge routers to the global SailGP circuit. The routers are installed in the “wings” of each F50 catamaran, linking to a private 5G network that pushes 53 billion data points per race day into Oracle’s OCI cloud. The setup powers IoT measurements, live video feeds, and critical comms across a dozen racing teams, all competing at highway speeds on open water. 

But this isn’t just about speed and spectacle. The core part of the brief is fairness and transparency, with race data on boat speed, wind direction, and position transmitted in real time and shared openly with all teams. 

Startup angle: Sports and live entertainment are crowded with new formats such as drone racing, immersive e-sports, and mixed-reality concerts. Each needs deterministic, high-quality connectivity in venues where Wi-Fi falters. Where giants like Ericsson showcase the technology on a global stage, smaller teams can capture the long tail of niche events. 

And the lesson is clear: don’t sell technology, sell the experience it enables, such as fairer competition, real-time insight, and more immersive fan moments.

From sailing fast to digging deep

Mines are some of the harshest connectivity environments on earth: kilometers underground, lined with rock and dust, and filled with vibration and machinery that kill off most wireless signals. Traditionally, operators have relied on patchy Wi-Fi or wired solutions that break down under stress, leaving both safety systems and automation limited. 

Newmont is showing how that can change. At its Cadia gold and copper mine in Australia, the company is deploying private 5G to replace unreliable Wi-Fi. In a trial, a single private 5G radio connected up to 12 remote-controlled dozers across 2.5 km tailings work area, delivering around 175 Mbps uplink throughput, with zero downtime. 

Previously, Wi-Fi could only support two machines within 100 m, was unreliable, and often caused half of a 12-hour shift to be lost to troubleshooting. The new private 5G system replaced that fragility with seamless coverage and control, allowing more earth to be moved during each shift. 

Newmont holds its own 5G spectrum license in Australia, which allows it to run private networks across all of its mining sites in the country. To support operations like teleremote dozing, the company has deployed Ericsson’s 5G Antenna Integrated Radio with Massive MIMO. This setup delivers the uplink connectivity mining depends on, especially across wide surface areas where machines need to be remotely monitored and controlled. 

Massive MIMO is key here. By using arrays of antennas to send and receive multiple signals simultaneously, it makes far better use of mid-band spectrum than traditional radio technologies. The result is higher throughput that can reach extended distances across open-pit mines, effectively multiplying the network’s capacity without multiplying the infrastructure. 

Ericsson has also added its Uplink Booster, a feature built into its custom processors that amplifies uplink signal strength by up to ten times. That extra power translates into stronger and more consistent upload performance, ensuring that telemetry, video feeds, and control signals flow reliably from heavy equipment spread across vast sites. Together, these innovations deliver a level of network reliability and scale that was not possible with Wi-Fi, giving Newmont both a productivity boost and a safer operating model. 

Startup angle: The opportunity is not limited to mega-mines. The same pain points exist in tunnels, underground logistics hubs, and large construction sites, only on a smaller and faster-moving scale. Founders can build portable network kits, rugged safety wearables, or sensor-driven dashboards that make underground connectivity modular and affordable. Where the mining majors demonstrate what is possible, startups can claim the long tail of projects that are too small or too specialized for the big players. 

And the lesson is clear: don’t sell technology, sell assurance. Assurance that workers stay safe, that operations remain visible, and that productivity does not grind to a halt, even in the toughest environments. 

From depths below to horizons offshore

If mines are black holes for connectivity, offshore energy platforms are digital islands, located dozens of kilometers from shore, with public 5G out of reach and satellite links too slow or expensive for real-time control. Safety, efficiency, and productivity all depend on closing that gap. 

That’s why Tampnet has deployed a fully autonomous private 5G and edge compute solution on Aker BP’s Edvard Grieg platform in the North Sea, described as the world’s first of its kind. Following a successful trial, Aker BP has committed to extending private 5G coverage to six more installations: Yggdrasil, Fenris, Valhall, Alvheim, Ivar Aasen, and Skarv.

The network provides full indoor and outdoor wireless coverage, with edge computing enabling critical data to be processed offshore. This reduces dependency on shore-side infrastructure and improves resilience. Use cases include sensor telemetry, predictive maintenance, AI tools, expert systems, robotics, digital twins, and mission-critical communication. 

The impact goes well beyond replacing satellite links. With private 5G and edge computing in place, drones could inspect flare stacks without exposing workers to risk, and AI models could monitor pumps and pipelines in real time. In this model, a rig shifts from a disconnected outpost into a hyper-connected hub for automation and safety. 

Startup angle: Offshore oil rigs are only the tip of the iceberg. The same architecture could support shipping corridors, offshore wind farms, and aquaculture farms, in any setting where operations need to run without waiting on a distant connection. Startups can step in with portable, self-sufficient private network kits that give smaller operators a plug-and-play way to run drones, robotics, or remote inspections. Where Tampnet and Aker BP prove the concept at scale, founders can translate it into agile, autonomous services for the wider blue economy. 

And the lesson is clear: don’t sell technology, sell autonomy. Autonomy to keep assets productive, inspections remote, and operations running, even when land is hundreds of kilometers away. 

Where the story turns to business

From racing seas to hidden depths and out to the rigs, private 5G is proving itself in places where conventional networks break. These are not just extreme tech demos; they are signals of where connectivity becomes a platform for entirely new services. 

For startups, the real opportunity lies in creativity over scale, taking the same principles and reimagining them for niche markets, smaller environments, or entirely new business models. Don’t sell technology; sell the outcomes it enables, such as fairer competition, safer workers, and resilient operations in places others overlook. 

And that raises the next question for any founder: once you have built a private network that works, how do you turn it into a business? 

That is where we will go in Part 2, with a hands-on blueprint for turning private wireless from a powerful technology into a sustainable business.