Historically, the oil and gas industry has been reluctant to adopt private 5G, with legacy TETRA, Wi‑Fi, Wi‑Max and SCADA networks being seen as ‘good enough’ so long as production continues to flow.

However, operational realities are shifting. Oil and gas assets are now increasingly distributed across vast, remote geographics, while digital assets demand far more from connectivity than legacy systems were ever designed to deliver. As operators look to sustain safety and productivity improvements over multi‑year asset lifecycles, private cellular networks, such as 5G, are now providing dedicated, on‑site connectivity with carrier-grade security, predictable performance, and seamless mobility.

How are legacy telecoms creating data bottlenecks?

Existing connectivity solutions are already under pressure from the scale and frequency of telemetry, generated by thousands of sensors deployed across fields, pipelines and processing facilities. Monitoring parameters such as pressure, temperature and vibration produces data volumes which are overwhelming legacy networks. The result is a growing bottleneck that constrains the adoption of more advanced digital solutions such as digital twins, predictive maintenance and real‑time digital optimisation.

At the same time, workforce expectations are evolving. A new generation of engineers and technicians expect modern connectivity as standard – supporting mobile workflows, video collaboration, and real‑time access to operational data. In many cases, it is operational teams themselves who are driving demand for modernisation, as they experience firsthand how legacy networks hinder efficiency, slow troubleshooting, and complicate safety management.

Safety requirements are also becoming more stringent. In hazardous environments, the priority in oil and gas is to minimise human exposure to risk. Yet many facilities still rely on legacy TETRA systems that offer little functionality beyond voice communications, or on Wi‑Fi never designed for mobile, safety‑critical work. As workers move across sites, connectivity gaps and handover failures can undermine digital tools and reduce situational awareness[i].

By contrast, cellular connectivity platforms provide consistent indoor‑outdoor coverage, supporting continuous visibility for both personnel and assets. Private 5G also enables more advanced safety capabilities, including high-quality video communications, geofencing, precise location tracking, ‘man down’ alerts, and integration with wearable sensors. In parallel, it supports automation and remote operations, reducing the need for personnel to enter hazardous areas.

Private 5G as multi‑year infrastructure

There is now a clear mismatch between the traditional preference for limiting changes to core systems and the growing cost and risks associated with relying on older approaches. Yet investing in new infrastructure is itself a major expense.

One approach is to view connectivity through a lens of a total cost of ownership (TCO). For oil and gas, this means counting more than equipment and deployment. TCO should include the ongoing cost of maintaining multiple legacy systems, the overheads of running parallel vendor contracts and specialist skill silos, the time and logistics tied to site visits, and the economic impact of outages and slow recovery. It should also account for risk exposure associated with safety and cybersecurity incidents, and the opportunity cost of delaying digital workflows that depend on reliable mobility and real-time data[ii].

By enabling real‑time monitoring and predictive resilience, private 5G can cut unplanned outages and reduce emergency interventions while replacing periodic manual inspections with continuous remote monitoring – for example, with 5G‑connected cameras and sensors on offshore platforms. The value often lies not in a single dramatic event, but in repeated reductions in delay and rework that compound across the years[iii].

In addition, private 5G allows operators to consolidate multiple legacy systems into a single, high‑availability platform, engineered for industrial environments, and able to handle metal‑dense interference far better than Wi‑Fi, providing seamless mobility for moving assets such as vehicles, robots and drones. By retiring a fragmented web of legacy solutions, operators can eliminate ‘network‑induced downtime’, simplify operations and reduce overall O&M costs.

Equally importantly, private 5G should be treated as long‑term, future‑proof infrastructure that can support new applications as they emerge.

Short‑term ROI versus long‑horizon strategy

The pace and nature of private 5G adoption in oil and gas is also often shaped by regional investment cultures. For example, in the US, there is often a strong emphasis on short‑term ROI and project‑by‑project justification, where each connectivity investment must prove itself within a tight payback window. Within that frame, it can be tempting to put another patch on an existing Wi‑Fi network, or to commission a narrow upgrade, rather than committing to a strategic platform, even when those fixes perpetuate long-term operating inefficiencies.

However, as operators begin to model the full cost of downtime, fewer site visits and safer operations over the life of an asset, a longer‑horizon view becomes easier to justify financially. A TCO approach makes private 5G more financeable, even in traditionally short‑term cultures, by showing how a single platform can reduce risk and operating expense year after year.

In contrast, many operators in the Gulf, Africa and Asia are more comfortable with long‑horizon infrastructure planning, such as with greenfield construction of LNG terminals and nuclear plants. In these projects, private 5G is increasingly designed from the outset as a core element of the operational backbone, with an explicit expectation that it will support a succession of applications over its lifetime. This means that investment decisions are made with an eye on lifecycle performance, resilience and strategic positioning, rather than on the cheapest immediate fix.

In a global market where companies are benchmarked not just on output but on safety, reliability and environmental performance, the ability to orchestrate operations with real‑time data and modern tools becomes a matter of competitiveness.

Ericsson: 5G as an economic advantage

As operators move from exploring private 5G to implementing it at scale, they need partners who understand industrial constraints, cyber security and the wider device and application ecosystem. They also need a partner that understands how AI, automation and advanced analytics are reshaping the digital oilfield, and how to turn OT data into real‑time, site‑level decisions.  Ericsson’s private network approach in oil and gas focuses on networks engineered for harsh environments and tightly integrated with workflows, safety systems and operational processes, rather than as a standalone telecom upgrade. Operators can start with a readiness assessment to map priority use cases, security requirements and site constraints, then build a phased roadmap that links connectivity investments directly to operational and financial outcomes[iv].

Beyond the network itself, Ericsson acts as a bridge between industrial operators and a global ecosystem of independent software vendors, hyperscalers, and system integrators – from AI video analytics and condition‑monitoring platforms to digital twin and connected‑worker solutions – ensuring that private 5G is not just connected, but integrated into real workflows, safety systems and operational processes.

When viewed through atotal cost of ownership and risk‑reduction lens, private 5G stops looking like a discretionary spend and starts to resemble the kind of strategic infrastructure that underpins safe, efficient and competitive operations.

The operators who recognise this shift – and who work with partners that understand both industrial realities and the next wave of AI, edge computing and digital‑twin innovations – will be best placed to navigate remote assets, rising safety expectations and a digitally minded workforce in the years ahead.

For more information on adopting private 5G, download the free white paper below.

[i] https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2024/3/lessons-learned-along-the-way-key-insights-for-oil-and-gas-when-building-connectivity-platforms
[ii] https://www.ericsson.com/497177/assets/local/industries/2022-05-ebook—how-private-networks-are-accelerating-oil-_-gas-efficiency.pdf
[iii] https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2025/4/how-private-5g-empowers-smart-operations-oil-gas-industry
[iv] https://cradlepoint.com/solutions/oil-and-gas-assessment/