April 22, 2025 • 12 mins
In this edition, AREA Executive Director Mark Sage chats with Alex Taylor, CEO of Net4. They discuss how Net4 is enabling XR use cases across industries by partnering with 5G providers to deliver secure, low-latency solutions over both public and private networks.
Despite the clear benefits of combining XR and 5G-like improved performance and immersive experiences, widespread deployment is lagging due to coverage gaps, device limitations, and integration challenges. Please visit thearea.org.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
Hello, I'm Karen Quatromoni,
Director of Public Relations forObject Management Group, OMG.
And welcome to our OMGPodcast series. At OMG,
we're known for driving industrystandards and building tech communities.
Today we're focusing on the AugmentedReality for Enterprise Alliance,
AREA,
(00:29):
the only global nonprofit member-basedorganization dedicated to the widespread
adoption of interoperable ARenabled enterprise systems.
Today we have the area's executivedirector Mark Sage who will
lead the podcast. Mark?
Hey, hello everybody. Mark Sage,
(00:50):
Executive Director of theAR for Enterprise Alliance,
or better known as the AREA.
And we're here with oneour newest Fireside Chat.
Our Fireside Chats are really speakingto the industry experts about what
they're doing, how they'reinfluencing the industry,
the use cases and case studies thatthey're working on and their experience in
(01:11):
the enterprise XR space today.
Very lucky to be with Alex, along-term kind of member at net four.
Alex,
it'd be great if you could introduceyourself and tell us a little bit about
Net4 please.
Hi Mark. Thank you. Yeah, soI'm Alex Taylor, CEO of Net4.
We've been running for eight years.We're a technology solutions provider,
(01:35):
so fairly generalist term,
but what we end up doing is solvingthe really complex problems for
customers.
So that's how we got into XRbecause XR is a complex area
with many issues aroundconnectivity, usability,
(01:55):
all the stuff that we'reseeing with those projects.
So it fits very well withour skills and capabilities.
Awesome. Well let's dig intothat a little bit more, Alex.
So if you can tell us about some ofthe key use cases you at net four are
solving across industries today. So.
We go back a few years.
We started looking at the5G network and how we can
(02:20):
work with the 5G network providers.
So we started looking at differentways and different environments where
things will be used andthat took us into retail.
So we've got a lot of interest in retail.
More recently is doing videoanalytics inside restaurants.
(02:40):
So that's a big current project we'vegot at the moment. Very, very exciting.
Causes a number of differentissues that's not XR related.
In the XR space we've got some largescale logistics and warehousing.
We've got some live videostreaming at sport events
(03:01):
and then lots of remote expert usecases for field workers and those sorts
of things. So they're three of thebig use cases we're seeing with xr.
Amazing.
And one of the really interestingthings I know you are very skilled at is
around the kind of 5Gand connectivity piece.
So the area has done apiece of research on it.
(03:22):
We have members that are interested inthat space. But from your perspective,
how are you working with the 5G providers?
It's all about deliveringsmarter, more connected solutions.
Can you talk a little bitabout your experience there?
Yeah, so when we started, as Isaid, when we started with 5G,
we started working with AWS andVodafone and I kind of expected a
(03:45):
more mature ecosystem andthat's not what we've got.
So what we're working at is where isit best to do workloads across the
network? So how much workloadcan you do on a device,
how much can you do at the edge?
And whether that's the edge of thedevice or the edge of the network and how
much goes into the cloud.
(04:06):
And that's where we've reallyfocused on minimizing the
strain on connectivitybecause 5G is not ubiquitous,
certainly in the public,
which is where we end up focusingbecause XR devices live in the wild,
they don't live in niceisolated conditions.
(04:27):
If you've got a nice safe office, youdon't use an XR device in industry,
you use it when you go out into thefield where it's hard to connect.
And so we were out in, ifyou look on my LinkedIn,
you'll see we were out in anunnamed location in the middle of
nowhere and it'sliterally sand everywhere.
(04:48):
There's no mobile coverage and we'rerunning, we're back hauling off starlink.
And so it's keeping that connectedand then quality of service with
starlink becomes very, very difficult.
So then how do you managethat and maintain that?
So that's where we focused is aroundseparating the workloads on the 5G
(05:10):
network and other networks. That'sbeen the biggest challenge for us.
Which is really interesting.
And we know your example of using XR knowis difficult to get to places but the
difficult connectivity places is reallyimportant and we could definitely see
one of the benefits there.
But maybe could you talk a little bitabout on the security side as well,
(05:30):
because one of the other benefitsthat we've talked about around
5G,
talk about on-prem and off-premin difficult kind of areas.
Maybe a mention on the securitybit and the importance of that.
Yeah, of course. So on the private side,
so a private 5G network,
if you install that insideyour factory or your warehouse,
(05:54):
then you get a completely privatenetwork so it's completely secure
and you can keep theworkload. So everything,
all of the processing can bedone at the edge of that network.
So nothing leaves the site.
And if it's set up in the right way,
then you end up with anair gap network as well,
(06:15):
which is really useful for security.Particularly things like defense,
some of the carmanufacturers that are very,
very paranoid about data leavingall of those trade secrets.
So that gives you that real securityharder to achieve on the public
network.
And we've been doing a lot of work withAWS on their wavelength environment and
(06:36):
we're actually working with BT atthe moment around that so that we can
actually provide thatsecurity across the public
network in the same way.So we can isolate the radio layer,
we can isolate the cloudenvironment so it's only on the 5G
network and it's only accessiblefrom the devices that we allow.
(06:59):
And it gives you that privacy on apublic network and we can make that
available on demand,
we can scale on demand because ofcourse you've got elastic compute from
AWS.
So it allows us to really sizethe solution for the requirements.
And that's a really interesting use case.
The biggest use for that atthe moment is real time video.
(07:23):
So if you're looking at things likesecurity or when you've got to have video
capability and you've got toguarantee that throughput,
you can get a 5G slice onthe public network and that's something we're actively
working on at.
The moment.
And then you can push your workloadinto a secure compute environment from
AWS actually on that. Yeah,
(07:47):
no really interesting and probably takesme a little bit onto my next question
about benefits and challenges.
And I think we talked a little bitabout some of the benefits though.
I'd love to get yourmore thoughts on that.
But what are some of the challenges thatyou are seeing in combining that kind
of 5G and XR technologies?Maybe to be honest Alex,
start with some of the other of thebenefits. You've mentioned a few,
(08:09):
but maybe summarize those.
So the benefits are it's guaranteeingconnectivity to a device that's
wireless.
You can't walk around with an ethernetcable plugged into an XR device.
It just doesn't give youthe capability you need.
So it is that guaranteedthroughput latency
(08:30):
on a mobile device.
Of course if you've got your phone thenyou can hold your phone up and your
brain can adjust to it.
And I'm sure you've got studieson if you start getting latency
delays and video issues, itreally is disorientating.
Yeah, very much so. Yeah.
(08:52):
So that's the biggest issue.You've got to get that through.
And also it's time of data.
So if you are trying to look atsomething and you've got say AI
bringing back some detailon what you're looking at,
you don't want a four or five seconddelay between what you're seeing and what
you're trying to do.
Not just it makes youdisorientated as a human but
(09:14):
also you might've moved on to somethingelse and you've lost that assistance.
So that latency for round trip time is
vital.
Yeah,
I think kind of summarize thator maybe you get your view on it.
We've done a lot of research and wepush in that 5G in exile but we're not
(09:35):
seeing apart from some of the examplesyou are working on too many examples of
the deployment. Any ideas why?
One of the reasons is that you're notseeing the 5G integrated into these
devices natively yet.
So in our trials we're still relying on,
(09:56):
I call it last mile wifi, but it's not,
it's the last couple of metersWill be a wifi connection.
Whether that's to a phone in your pocket,
whether it's to a little wifi device,
battery powered or whetherit's to a full router.
And that still gives you that uncertainty.
Whereas if you've got 5Gembedded on the device,
(10:19):
you can then guarantee thethroughput and latency.
So from the 5G networksaren't quite ready,
devices aren't quite ready and we'vegot a Mexican standoff where they're
looking at each other going, who'sgoing to blink first? Yeah, absolutely.
And I think that is a big issue.
And then maybe some of theapplications that we've seen the mobile
(10:40):
networks certainly promote arepossibly not quite on the money
and a little bit farfetched. Andso it's finding the real use cases.
We've got one in particular we'reworking on, we can't say too much detail,
but it is around real timevideo and our biggest issue is
capacity.
(11:01):
So it's at large stadia and how doyou guarantee the video throughput
when 80,
90,000 people turn up andwe've done live trials on the
network and it just collapses And youlose all of your quality and you can't get
the throughput and all of thethings we've just discussed.
So it is finding those usecases and hopefully we'll be able to shout about that
(11:25):
in six, eight months and everyonewould go, that's fantastic,
but we could port it toreal time security around
stadium. So you could push into,
we tend to work on the augmentedreality and smart glass side
rather than the heavy VR side,
(11:46):
but you could push real time video tosecurity. They could then see images,
they could get warnings of whereincidents are likely to happen,
cues are happening or maybesomeone needs attention and you can
bring that in so they know exactlywhere it is and they know exactly what
they're going to attend.
And that's something we can do now andwe're actively working with a number of
(12:09):
partners say including BT on that. Sothey're things we're keen to look at.
That's amazing Alex.
And it is great to hear about some ofthe actual things that you're doing now.
That's what's really great.
So if anybody's interestedin that combination of XR and
connectivity and 5G, obviouslynet forward doing that.
(12:31):
But just XR solutions themselves, I knowyou've got a really great team there.
So Alex, I want to thankyou for your insights.
Look forward to catching up with youagain when that kind of use case comes
through and we can talk aboutthat in a little bit more detail.
But thank you very muchfor your time today.
Thanks for having me,Mark. Cheers. Bye-Bye.
Hello, I'm Karen Quatromoni,
Director of Public Relations forObject Management Group, OMG.
And welcome to our OMGPodcast series. At OMG,
we're known for driving industrystandards and building tech communities.
Today we're focusing on the AugmentedReality for Enterprise Alliance,
AREA,
(00:29):
the only global nonprofit member-basedorganization dedicated to the widespread
adoption of interoperable ARenabled enterprise systems.
Today we have the area's executivedirector Mark Sage who will
lead the podcast. Mark?
Hey, hello everybody. Mark Sage,
(00:50):
Executive Director of theAR for Enterprise Alliance,
or better known as the AREA.
And we're here with oneour newest Fireside Chat.
Our Fireside Chats are really speakingto the industry experts about what
they're doing, how they'reinfluencing the industry,
the use cases and case studies thatthey're working on and their experience in
(01:11):
the enterprise XR space today.
Very lucky to be with Alex, along-term kind of member at net four.
Alex,
it'd be great if you could introduceyourself and tell us a little bit about
Net4 please.
Hi Mark. Thank you. Yeah, soI'm Alex Taylor, CEO of Net4.
We've been running for eight years.We're a technology solutions provider,
(01:35):
so fairly generalist term,
but what we end up doing is solvingthe really complex problems for
customers.
So that's how we got into XRbecause XR is a complex area
with many issues aroundconnectivity, usability,
(01:55):
all the stuff that we'reseeing with those projects.
So it fits very well withour skills and capabilities.
Awesome. Well let's dig intothat a little bit more, Alex.
So if you can tell us about some ofthe key use cases you at net four are
solving across industries today. So.
We go back a few years.
We started looking at the5G network and how we can
(02:20):
work with the 5G network providers.
So we started looking at differentways and different environments where
things will be used andthat took us into retail.
So we've got a lot of interest in retail.
More recently is doing videoanalytics inside restaurants.
(02:40):
So that's a big current project we'vegot at the moment. Very, very exciting.
Causes a number of differentissues that's not XR related.
In the XR space we've got some largescale logistics and warehousing.
We've got some live videostreaming at sport events
(03:01):
and then lots of remote expert usecases for field workers and those sorts
of things. So they're three of thebig use cases we're seeing with xr.
Amazing.
And one of the really interestingthings I know you are very skilled at is
around the kind of 5Gand connectivity piece.
So the area has done apiece of research on it.
(03:22):
We have members that are interested inthat space. But from your perspective,
how are you working with the 5G providers?
It's all about deliveringsmarter, more connected solutions.
Can you talk a little bitabout your experience there?
Yeah, so when we started, as Isaid, when we started with 5G,
we started working with AWS andVodafone and I kind of expected a
(03:45):
more mature ecosystem andthat's not what we've got.
So what we're working at is where isit best to do workloads across the
network? So how much workloadcan you do on a device,
how much can you do at the edge?
And whether that's the edge of thedevice or the edge of the network and how
much goes into the cloud.
(04:06):
And that's where we've reallyfocused on minimizing the
strain on connectivitybecause 5G is not ubiquitous,
certainly in the public,
which is where we end up focusingbecause XR devices live in the wild,
they don't live in niceisolated conditions.
(04:27):
If you've got a nice safe office, youdon't use an XR device in industry,
you use it when you go out into thefield where it's hard to connect.
And so we were out in, ifyou look on my LinkedIn,
you'll see we were out in anunnamed location in the middle of
nowhere and it'sliterally sand everywhere.
(04:48):
There's no mobile coverage and we'rerunning, we're back hauling off starlink.
And so it's keeping that connectedand then quality of service with
starlink becomes very, very difficult.
So then how do you managethat and maintain that?
So that's where we focused is aroundseparating the workloads on the 5G
(05:10):
network and other networks. That'sbeen the biggest challenge for us.
Which is really interesting.
And we know your example of using XR knowis difficult to get to places but the
difficult connectivity places is reallyimportant and we could definitely see
one of the benefits there.
But maybe could you talk a little bitabout on the security side as well,
(05:30):
because one of the other benefitsthat we've talked about around
5G,
talk about on-prem and off-premin difficult kind of areas.
Maybe a mention on the securitybit and the importance of that.
Yeah, of course. So on the private side,
so a private 5G network,
if you install that insideyour factory or your warehouse,
(05:54):
then you get a completely privatenetwork so it's completely secure
and you can keep theworkload. So everything,
all of the processing can bedone at the edge of that network.
So nothing leaves the site.
And if it's set up in the right way,
then you end up with anair gap network as well,
(06:15):
which is really useful for security.Particularly things like defense,
some of the carmanufacturers that are very,
very paranoid about data leavingall of those trade secrets.
So that gives you that real securityharder to achieve on the public
network.
And we've been doing a lot of work withAWS on their wavelength environment and
(06:36):
we're actually working with BT atthe moment around that so that we can
actually provide thatsecurity across the public
network in the same way.So we can isolate the radio layer,
we can isolate the cloudenvironment so it's only on the 5G
network and it's only accessiblefrom the devices that we allow.
(06:59):
And it gives you that privacy on apublic network and we can make that
available on demand,
we can scale on demand because ofcourse you've got elastic compute from
AWS.
So it allows us to really sizethe solution for the requirements.
And that's a really interesting use case.
The biggest use for that atthe moment is real time video.
(07:23):
So if you're looking at things likesecurity or when you've got to have video
capability and you've got toguarantee that throughput,
you can get a 5G slice onthe public network and that's something we're actively
working on at.
The moment.
And then you can push your workloadinto a secure compute environment from
AWS actually on that. Yeah,
(07:47):
no really interesting and probably takesme a little bit onto my next question
about benefits and challenges.
And I think we talked a little bitabout some of the benefits though.
I'd love to get yourmore thoughts on that.
But what are some of the challenges thatyou are seeing in combining that kind
of 5G and XR technologies?Maybe to be honest Alex,
start with some of the other of thebenefits. You've mentioned a few,
(08:09):
but maybe summarize those.
So the benefits are it's guaranteeingconnectivity to a device that's
wireless.
You can't walk around with an ethernetcable plugged into an XR device.
It just doesn't give youthe capability you need.
So it is that guaranteedthroughput latency
(08:30):
on a mobile device.
Of course if you've got your phone thenyou can hold your phone up and your
brain can adjust to it.
And I'm sure you've got studieson if you start getting latency
delays and video issues, itreally is disorientating.
Yeah, very much so. Yeah.
(08:52):
So that's the biggest issue.You've got to get that through.
And also it's time of data.
So if you are trying to look atsomething and you've got say AI
bringing back some detailon what you're looking at,
you don't want a four or five seconddelay between what you're seeing and what
you're trying to do.
Not just it makes youdisorientated as a human but
(09:14):
also you might've moved on to somethingelse and you've lost that assistance.
So that latency for round trip time is
vital.
Yeah,
I think kind of summarize thator maybe you get your view on it.
We've done a lot of research and wepush in that 5G in exile but we're not
(09:35):
seeing apart from some of the examplesyou are working on too many examples of
the deployment. Any ideas why?
One of the reasons is that you're notseeing the 5G integrated into these
devices natively yet.
So in our trials we're still relying on,
(09:56):
I call it last mile wifi, but it's not,
it's the last couple of metersWill be a wifi connection.
Whether that's to a phone in your pocket,
whether it's to a little wifi device,
battery powered or whetherit's to a full router.
And that still gives you that uncertainty.
Whereas if you've got 5Gembedded on the device,
(10:19):
you can then guarantee thethroughput and latency.
So from the 5G networksaren't quite ready,
devices aren't quite ready and we'vegot a Mexican standoff where they're
looking at each other going, who'sgoing to blink first? Yeah, absolutely.
And I think that is a big issue.
And then maybe some of theapplications that we've seen the mobile
(10:40):
networks certainly promote arepossibly not quite on the money
and a little bit farfetched. Andso it's finding the real use cases.
We've got one in particular we'reworking on, we can't say too much detail,
but it is around real timevideo and our biggest issue is
capacity.
(11:01):
So it's at large stadia and how doyou guarantee the video throughput
when 80,
90,000 people turn up andwe've done live trials on the
network and it just collapses And youlose all of your quality and you can't get
the throughput and all of thethings we've just discussed.
So it is finding those usecases and hopefully we'll be able to shout about that
(11:25):
in six, eight months and everyonewould go, that's fantastic,
but we could port it toreal time security around
stadium. So you could push into,
we tend to work on the augmentedreality and smart glass side
rather than the heavy VR side,
(11:46):
but you could push real time video tosecurity. They could then see images,
they could get warnings of whereincidents are likely to happen,
cues are happening or maybesomeone needs attention and you can
bring that in so they know exactlywhere it is and they know exactly what
they're going to attend.
And that's something we can do now andwe're actively working with a number of
(12:09):
partners say including BT on that. Sothey're things we're keen to look at.
That's amazing Alex.
And it is great to hear about some ofthe actual things that you're doing now.
That's what's really great.
So if anybody's interestedin that combination of XR and
connectivity and 5G, obviouslynet forward doing that.
(12:31):
But just XR solutions themselves, I knowyou've got a really great team there.
So Alex, I want to thankyou for your insights.
Look forward to catching up with youagain when that kind of use case comes
through and we can talk aboutthat in a little bit more detail.
But thank you very muchfor your time today.
Thanks for having me,Mark. Cheers. Bye-Bye.
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