What is IoT?

Understanding IoT

Understanding and navigating around the IoT landscape is a prerequisite to maximizing its business potential for your sector. Faced by increased service and solution demands, service providers, enterprises and industries must decide on which IoT path to take. Where are you going? Which road will you take? Ericsson understands your needs and has your IoT roadmap.

Even though the need to efficiently connect billions of physical devices around the world rapidly increases, the IoT landscape remains fragmented regarding technologies. IoT connectivity must be flexible and agile, to meet the network performance required for a wide variety of evolving IoT use cases, applications, and device types.

The IoT market is rapidly growing and this indicates a substantial business potential for communications service providers, industries and enterprises. In Ericsson’s Mobility Report November 2019, it is forecasted that there will be 5 billion Cellular IoT connections by the year 2025. The estimated revenue from the IoT and 5G industry digitalization is USD 619 billion by 2026. How can you tailor services and solutions to capture these market shares?

Cellular IoT is 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 what 4G provides. With the arrival of 5G networks, these features will be further enhanced and offer better efficiency, improved device management and ultra-low latency, which can enable innovations and transform industries. There are other technologies available that enable connectivity but cellular IoT delivers reliable and secure connectivity around the globe.

Cellular IoT can address both the relatively simpler requirements of connecting devices that have a lower complexity such as wearables, simple metering, etc. as well as the highly specific, sensitive demands of complex environments and applications such as manufacturing or logistics.

Cellular IoT itself is a rapidly growing ecosystem based on 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) global standards. 3GPP works with telecommunications standard development organizations and provides its members with a stable environment to produce the reports and specifications that define 3GPP technologies.

3GPP standards are supported by an increasing number of communications service providers (CSPs) 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.

To determine your IoT readiness, consider your role in the IoT ecosystem. Ericsson can guide you, provide reliable solutions, and be a trustworthy partner on your IoT journey and help transform your business.

What is IoT and what role can service providers play? A person looking at a blueprint.

IoT for service providers

Create new opportunities for growth by deciding your IoT path as a service provider. Do you want to build the network and help enterprises connect devices? Do you want to address less complex devices or focus on more advanced cases and what kind of network is needed?

What is IoT and what role can industries play? A person in an industrial setting holding a tablet.

IoT for industries

Connecting industry sectors such as mining, automotive, smart metering, logistics, factories and warehouses can boost the industry’s efficiency, safety, reliability and ultimately profitability. Cellular connectivity may give you the competitive advantage you need. Can you afford to remain on the sidelines while competitors get connected?