IoT connectivity
IoT supports digital transformation and development of new business models and offerings. By building on existing cellular networks, billions of IoT devices can be connected, helping you stay relevant to your customers and grow new revenues while helping your customers gain a competitive advantage.
IoT is being widely embraced with the number of connected devices growing rapidly but the market landscape remains fragmented. For new business models, connectivity must be flexible and agile, in order to meet the network performance required for a wide variety of evolving IoT use cases, applications, and device types.
Cellular IoT technologies
Cellular IoT has been widely adopted across the globe, with 2G and 3G connectivity enabling many early IoT applications. Greater bandwidth, lower latency and increased support for large volumes of devices per cell are coming to the market with 4G offerings. These will be enhanced further with the arrival of 5G networks, initially enabled by the 5G New Radio (NR) standard, which will enable Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC) that support increasingly critical applications.
Cellular IoT therefore has the capability to address both the relatively simpler requirements of the Massive IoT market as well as the highly specific, sensitive demands of complex environments and applications.
Cellular IoT itself is a rapidly growing ecosystem based on 3GPP global standards, supported by an increasing number of mobile network providers as well as device, chipset, module and network infrastructure vendors. It offers better performance than other Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) network technologies in terms of unmatched global coverage, Quality of Service, scalability, security and the flexibility to handle the different requirements for a comprehensive range of use cases.
Early IoT adopters
Cellular IoT solutions
Ericsson's Cellular IoT solution addresses diverse use cases ranging from the more basic use cases such as asset tracking and smart metering to more advanced use cases such as drones, AR/VR, to even higher demanding use cases such as autonomous vehicles and collaborative robotics.
The solution leverages new 4G LTE and 5G NR capabilities in the four segments:
- Massive IoT provide cellular IoT connectivity to low complexity IoT devices based on NB-IoT and CAT-M technologies.
- Broadband IoT adopts the capabilities of mobile broadband connectivity, providing much higher data rates and lower latencies than Massive IoT to your connected IoT devices
- Critical IoT – It addresses extreme low latencies and ultra-high reliability connectivity requirements, powered by 5G NR
- Industrial Automation IoT – It is tailored for advanced industrial automation applications of global manufacturers
