Across Alabama, from the automotive corridor around Montgomery and Tuscaloosa to the busy docks at the Port of Mobile, many facilities are struggling with the same problem. WiFi slows down once forklifts leave the loading bay, public LTE dead zones appear between buildings, and high-speed fiber rarely runs to every corner of sprawling campuses. The result is dropped scanners, laggy handhelds, and frustrated operations teams. One example is the Hyundai Motor Manufacturing campus in Montgomery, where thousands of autonomous carts and inspection tablets must stay connected as they move between metal-clad buildings and outdoor yards. A properly designed private cellular network solves that challenge while giving IT total control.

Why Alabama Facilities Are Turning To Private 5G

Alabama hosts a unique mix of industries that all benefit from wide-area, low-latency wireless connectivity.

1. Automotive manufacturing in Montgomery, Tuscaloosa, and Huntsville relies on robotics, AGVs, and real-time quality control cameras that cannot tolerate WiFi interference.
2. Aerospace and defense companies around Redstone Arsenal and Huntsville require secure local traffic isolation that public carriers cannot provide.
3. Logistics operators along I-65 and at the Port of Mobile need blanket outdoor coverage for yard management systems and rugged handheld computers.
4. Healthcare networks in Birmingham and Mobile want HIPAA-compliant wireless for connected medical devices that roam between multiple buildings.

Unlike WiFi 6 or WiFi 7, a private 5G network runs in the lightly licensed CBRS band. Radios can transmit at up to 47 dBm EIRP, roughly 200 times the power allowed for indoor WiFi, so a single small cell covers an entire warehouse or ten acres of yard space. That is particularly valuable on the Gulf Coast, where hurricane-ready metal construction and Low-E coated glass block higher-frequency WiFi signals. Private 5G also avoids monthly per-line fees charged by AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile. You own the core, manage your own SIMs, and keep traffic on your LAN.

Private 5G: How It Beats WiFi And Public Cellular

A private 5G network looks and feels like the macro networks your phone already uses, but you control every element.

• Spectrum: Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS, band 48) provides 150 MHz of mid-band spectrum reserved for enterprise use. Priority access licenses in parts of Alabama are inexpensive compared to urban centers, protecting your channels from interference.
• Coverage: Each indoor small cell covers 20,000 to 60,000 square feet. Outdoor radios can reach devices two miles away. That means far fewer access points than WiFi and far less cable.
• Capacity: 5G supports hundreds of simultaneous connections per radio with deterministic scheduling. Packet loss remains low even when scanners, cameras, and voice headsets all talk at once.
• Latency: Round-trip latency stays below 20 milliseconds when the core is on-site, perfect for machine control or AR overlays.
• Security: SIM authentication and network slicing isolate production, guest, and IoT traffic without complex VLAN rules.

Public carrier 5G will never deliver the same outcome. Carriers optimize for population centers, not your warehouse or mine. Traffic noses through distant packet cores, adding 40 to 80 milliseconds of delay, and there is no way to shape or prioritize business-critical traffic.

For a deeper dive into the technology, see our in-depth Private Networks Guide.

Our End-To-End Deployment Process

We remove every obstacle between your first question and day-one coverage.

1. Rapid Site Snapshot
   Send us a floor plan or satellite image, tell us which devices matter, and we will return a preliminary RF layout and budget in just a few days.

2. Detailed Design
   If the concept meets your goals, our engineers build a full three-dimensional propagation model, select the optimal mix of Celona, Baicells, Airspan, or other vendor equipment, and provide a firm proposal that includes coverage maps, bill of materials, and installation timeline.

3. Turnkey Build
   We supply and stage the radios, edge core, SIMs, and user devices such as Peplink routers, Zebra scanners, or Moso industrial cameras. Our technicians handle mounting, power, fiber, and integration with your existing IT policies.

4. Ongoing Assurance
   Every Waveform Private Network includes remote monitoring, software upgrades, and a service-level agreement so your team can focus on operations instead of RF troubleshooting.

Need connectivity even faster? Ask about our ruggedized network-in-a-box kits that ship ready to deploy for temporary yards, disaster recovery, or special events.

Proven Expertise In The Southeast

Waveform has already delivered robust wireless connectivity for customers throughout the region. A recent deployment for a global food and beverage manufacturer in neighboring Georgia required blanket coverage across more than one million square feet of production and cold-storage space. You can read the case study here. While that project used different radio technology, the lessons about RF propagation through thick insulated panels and high-moisture environments directly inform our private 5G designs for similar facilities in Alabama.

Transparent Pricing

Because private networks scale from a single building to multi-acre campuses, costs vary. For typical indoor deployments, turnkey pricing ranges from $1.00 to $2.50 per square foot, which includes radios, core, installation, and first-year support. Outdoor coverage is often even more cost-effective. In open terrain, a single sector radio can blanket a 1.5-mile radius for roughly $100,000, all in. Our rapid snapshot will give you a firm estimate before you commit a penny.

Ready To Connect Every Square Foot?

Waveform is a connectivity integrator that delivers turnkey private 5G network solutions across Alabama and the Southeast. Call us at (800) 637-4049 or get a custom private 5g design and quote today.