HPE Aruba may bring its private networks to Europe from Q1 2025

During HPE’s event in London, the company outlined the plans for its recently launched private 5G offering, which it expects to bring to Europe early next year.

HPE’s networking business, Aruba, outlined its plans for rolling out private networks in Europe during the HPE Viva Las Vegas event that took place in London this week. Dobias van Ingen, HPE Aruba’s EMEA systems engineering director and CTO, said the company is targeting roughly Q1 2025 for deployments in the EU. 

The remarks come after the launch of the HPE Aruba Networking enterprise private 5G solution in June. With HPE acting as the mobile network operator (MNO), the single-vendor offering includes a 4G or 5G core, as well as SIMs or eSIMs cards, small cells and a dashboard.

HPE says its small cell radios ensure coverage indoors and outdoors, preventing the need for a third party management tool.

“What we do is we focus initially on data, because most of the things are moving to data like push to talk – it’s not traditional voice anymore – and then build a solution up from that perspective. But you only deal with one vendor,” van Ingen said.

HPE Aruba devised the solution to address enterprise deployments in environments like harbors, warehouses and healthcare organizations. “We took a new core, and we created our own RAN [radio access network] indoor and outdoor and packaged that into one,” he said.

Nevertheless, the solution can be used for smaller deployments. Van Ingen highlighted the fact that Athonet has developed a core that can be placed in a backpack for deployment in circumstances including natural disaster relief. 

Deploying private networks

This means the private network can be pared back to “a single RAN” or even deployed on a drone, van Ingen added. Nevertheless, he argued Wi-Fi coverage typically targets areas measured in square feet, while private networks deal in square miles. 

When it comes to deployment, van Ingen said that rolling out private networks is easy in the US because of the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum. Meanwhile, HPE Aruba is targeting Q1 2025 for deployments in European countries where spectrum is made available for private networks. The company is waiting until next year partly in order to get the partner community ready, van Ingen said. 

Asked whether the solution can be deployed without an MNO partner, he said it depends on the market. In countries that allow spectrum use for private networks, the solution only needs to register, which takes about one to three days. Meanwhile, in some countries like Austria a partnership with an MNO would be necessary to deploy a private network.  

Outside of private networks, HPE Aruba has – much like everyone else these days ­­– also been focusing on generative AI. However, according to van Ingen, the company is planning to have a network centric and security centric model, rather than focusing squarely on text. 

For example, the company has been trying to make sure a device that can connect to multiple frequencies can help determine the right band to connect to. Moreover, HPE Aruba has also created an opt-in model, where support calls are logged automatically using AI if there is an issue – otherwise, van Ingen said, this takes about an hour.