Cisco teamed with General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), a business unit of aerospace and defence contractor General Dynamics, to deliver private 5G services to US government agencies for IoT and edge use cases.

GDIT is tapping Cisco’s experience with government agencies, cybersecurity, AI, cloud, edge computing and IoT.

Cisco’s private 5G service is built on its mobile core technology and IoT portfolio spanning sensors and gateways, device management software, monitoring tools and dashboards.

GDIT provided IT solutions to federal, state and local governments for more than 30 years and partnered with Cisco since the 1980s.

Robert Smallwood, GDIT VP of digital modernisation and enterprise IT services, stated Cisco’s private 5G service would provide the flexibility, security and resiliency which are required by the government sector.

A Cisco representative added GDIT would use mid- and high-band spectrum in its laboratory.

Cisco announced a private 5G as-a-service offering at Mobile World Congress in February and followed up with a deployment with independent multinational ICT company Axians earlier this month.

In an interview with Mobile World Live (MWL) at Cisco Live earlier this month, VP and general manager of the company’s cable and IoT business Masum Mir, stated the private network ecosystem requires zero trust security which fits “within the enterprise security architecture, both from an access standpoint and an identity management standpoint as well as the back end security”.

Private entities including enterprises, industries and government agencies have ramped their use of private networks as a means to protect their own data by keeping it off the public internet.

In addition to Cisco, Ericsson and Nokia have stepped up their private network offerings while system integrators and cloud providers are also with working government agencies and enterprises on deployments.