Can Private 5G Solve the Indoor Coverage Challenge?

There is something slightly odd about the way the enterprise approaches indoor connectivity in 2026.

 On the one hand, significant investments in private 5G networks have connected people, machines, cameras, sensors and operational systems across a huge range of use cases. However, many of the same organisations are still struggling to get a reliable signal inside their buildings on their everyday phones.

To date, the common approach has been to treat both operational connectivity and public mobile coverage as separate. If you need dependable connectivity for operational applications, build a private network. Meanwhile, if you want better coverage for employees and visitors using their mobile devices, that is a different project altogether, seen as requiring different infrastructure, different stakeholders and often, a different budget.

Historically, that separation might have made sense. But today, if an organisation is already going to the trouble and expense of putting cellular infrastructure throughout a building, shouldn’t it at least be asking whether that infrastructure can do more than one job?

 In-building connectivity remains a stubborn problem for mobile networks

We have become so accustomed to mobile connectivity that today we only tend to notice it when it’s not there. And it is indoors where that problem still persists more often than anyone would like – or, in many cases, admit.

 The reasons are as well-established as they are fairly mundane. Public mobile networks were primarily designed to provide wide-area coverage, while modern buildings, thanks to a multitude of factors, can be remarkably effective at keeping those radio signals out. Reinforced concrete, energy-efficient glazing, construction materials and the simple geometry of a large building can all turn perfectly good outdoor coverage into a frustrating indoor experience.

Meanwhile, user expectations have moved in the opposite direction. Nobody arriving at a building today thinks that indoor mobile coverage should be an optional extra. Employees expect their phones to work at their desks just as visitors expect voice and data services to follow them through the door. Businesses depend on mobile connectivity for everything from payments and communications to cameras, sensors and other operational applications and, as technology has become more unplugged, that reliance on mobility has grown.

 To date, the most straightforward solution has been to bring the mobile network indoors using dedicated infrastructure such as distributed antenna systems (DAS), small cells or some form of neutral-host network which can support multiple operators.

 While all of those approaches can work very well for different applications, the awkward part is usually found in the economics. While infrastructure such as airports, stadiums or shopping centres can generate enough demand to justify substantial indoor mobile infrastructure deployments, the investment required becomes harder to justify for individual buildings such as offices, industrial facilities, hotels, healthcare buildings or small-to-medium sized venues.

 There are radios to install, cabling to run, power and backhaul to provide, equipment locations to agree, systems to maintain and operate, and multiple mobile operators to involve and cater for. Meanwhile, somewhere in the process comes the question that has killed off many a sensible indoor coverage project – who will pay for it?

Enterprises are already building cellular networks indoors

 This is where private 5G makes the conversation around in-building connectivity more interesting. To date, private networks have been deployed for the operational reasons listed above, and those use cases create a business case in their own right. But, if we look at what happens physically when a private network is deployed, buildings already have many of the things that would also be required to solve its indoor public-mobile problem such as strategically positioned radios, cabling, power, compute and backhaul.

This leads to a fairly simple question, if a building already has cellular infrastructure, why should better public mobile coverage automatically mean building another radio network?

Bridging the two networks

This is where technologies such as Multi-Operator Core Network, or MOCN, can help. MOCN makes it possible for common radio infrastructure to provide access to multiple mobile networks while those networks retain their own core-network environments. Or, put more simply, multiple networks can use the same radio layer without becoming the same network.

The argument here is not that an enterprise private network and several public mobile operators should somehow be mashed together into one enormous network with common security policies, operational processes and users, but that we can preserve separation where separation matters, while sharing infrastructure where duplication adds little value. i.e. infrastructure convergence, not network convergence.

MOCN allows the enterprise to continue to operate its private 5G service according to its own requirements, while public mobile subscribers could receive a service associated with their normal mobile operator. Which potentially changes is the amount of physical infrastructure required to deliver both.

Combining Private and Public 5G

Private 5G is currently still judged against a relatively narrow list of applications. Can it improve automation? Can it connect cameras? Does it provide better mobility for operational teams? Can it support IoT devices?

However, if the same investment can also help address the most persistent problem of reliable indoor public mobile coverage, the value of the infrastructure starts to extend beyond the original private network use case.

 At that point, an organisation is no longer buying a network for a particular application, it is building a cellular infrastructure layer. Different users can sit on it, different services can make use of it, different security and operational policies can remain in place. And, potentially, different commercial models can emerge around it.

While not every private 5G deployment should become a neutral-host mobile network,the underlying assumption is worth challenging.

Treating private 5G and indoor public mobile coverage as separate infrastructure categories is no longer necessary and, as more enterprises start investing in private cellular infrastructure of their own, it will become increasingly difficult to ignore the question, if one building needs both private 5G and better public mobile coverage, why should it automatically need two sets of radio infrastructure?