According to a report by Accedian, 76% of manufacturers plan to adopt private 5G by 2024.

The potential for 5G to completely transform industries is immeasurable. By promising decreased latency, enhanced security, and the ability to support artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR), sectors like health care, gaming, and emergency services will be forever altered. But those opportunities are still far in the future. Most industries and the majority of enterprises aren’t yet equipped with the right infrastructure to support 5G. The major exception is manufacturing. As an industry almost entirely dependent on the successful connections between machines, manufacturing is ripe to adopt 5G. But that’s only true if their IT teams are equipped with the right knowledge, skills, tools, and the ecosystem of service providers and technology vendors that can provide the tools and support to make individual visions of Industry 4.0 a reality.

To understand manufacturing teams’ readiness for 5G, Accedian, a provider of performance analytics, cybersecurity threat detection, and end-user experience solutions, partnered with Analysys Mason on a new study of 5G adoption trends. The result was overwhelmingly positive: More than three-fourths (76%) of respondents are planning to adopt private 5G networks by 2024, and list the benefits of increased network security (63%), network performance (49%), and application performance (45%) as a few of the key reasons why.

But respondents also pointed out a few challenges that have impeded their adoption process thus far, such as the increased complexity of managing the network (43%). This is where service providers have a part to play, particularly in moving from being solely a vendor to becoming more of a strategic partner throughout the 5G adoption process. It’s with this collaborative mindset that the promise of 5G in manufacturing will become a reality, and usher in Industry 4.0.

Analysys Mason, a management consultancy focused on technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT), surveyed 200 respondents from Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, and the United States across six verticals to gain insight into private 5G adoption.

Read the full report by Accedian.