Belden and Betacom test private 5G at MxD without publishing throughput figures

For factory operators, the result settles a narrow question. It leaves the expensive ones open. The test shows an existing industrial router can reach a private 5G core and move data to a cloud application. It does not show how fast the link runs, how reliably it works under motion, or whether timing-sensitive industrial protocols survive the trip. Belden published no comparison with Wi-Fi.

What the MxD test actually showed

Belden and Betacom ran two standalone private 5G setups on the CBRS n48 band inside MxD's laboratory. Several wireless systems were operating there at the same time. The first paired Moso radio equipment with a Druid Raemis 5G core. The second was an Open RAN setup using LG core and radio equipment.

Belden's NetModule NB1810 industrial router connected to both networks and passed the checks the companies set: Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, static IP addressing and data transfer. An Everged L2 electric vehicle charging station connected through the router and Betacom's private 5G network. It exchanged data with its cloud management platform and received remote configuration and pricing updates.

That is the whole public result. It includes no packet loss rates, no latency percentiles and no comparison with Wi-Fi. For a plant engineer, those figures decide a deployment.

Why factory buyers should care

The appeal is retrofit. The NB1810 lets compatible industrial equipment join a private 5G network without a cellular modem built into the machine. Existing fleets stay in place instead of facing a hardware refresh.

Belden flagged the limit itself. An IP connection does not confirm compatibility with industrial communication protocols that need precise timing or synchronisation, the company said. Belden also named two problems for mobile equipment such as automated guided vehicles: connectivity interruptions during Wi-Fi handovers and inconsistent response times.

The evidence gap: lab only, no throughput

Randy Romanaux, author of Belden's technical article, wrote that "mobility and latency performance are the next areas to evaluate in a production environment".

Published research points at the same wall. An IEEE Access study from April 2026 tested private 5G, public cellular networks and Wi-Fi on a mobile robotic platform. None of the individual connections met the study's 99.9% reliability target on its own. Configurations that combined private 5G and Wi-Fi through packet duplication met or exceeded it. The researchers reported greater stability with private 5G during mobility. They tied that to the single-cell architecture in their tests.

A buyer choosing between the two technologies needs throughput, latency and handover behaviour under load. None of those numbers is public from the MxD work.

Other 5G trials show the same demo-to-deployment gap

NATO's DiBaX 2026 exercise ran between 19 and 30 October. It tested whether ordinary 5G towers could passively detect and track drones. The exercise tried three methods of using commercial 5G in Latvia with the United States, Canada, Germany, Finland, Lithuania and other allies. Some tests failed, according to Tom's Hardware.

"We have connected systems that were never designed to communicate with each other, using artificial intelligence to overcome interoperability barriers," said Admiral Pierre Vandier, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation.

In the United States, AT&T and Ericsson demonstrated drone detection over 5G outside AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The system tracked drones flying at altitudes between 300 and 400 feet. Tom's Hardware described the demo as an early taste of 6G, which formally includes both communications and sensing. The Register reported on 2 November that Ericsson says it can detect and track drones using only mobile networks.

Commercial rollouts are moving on a separate track. ZTE and du said they had activated Upper 6 GHz radio equipment on du's live 5G-Advanced network in the UAE. They described it as the first commercial end-to-end U6GHz connection using commercially available customer premises equipment. The setup uses 350 MHz across the 6775 to 7125 MHz band.

Hu Kun, ZTE's president for the Middle East, said the activation "represents an important achievement" in the two companies' strategic collaboration.

What happens next

Belden has named its next step: mobility and latency testing in a production environment. It has not said when that work will happen.

Until a vendor publishes throughput and latency figures from a working factory, the private 5G case rests on connectivity demos. That is a lower bar than most plant managers can buy on.