Ericsson bulked up its efforts to help operators address a larger chunk of the cellular IoT market, launching new solutions and support for use cases across a range of verticals including automotive, manufacturing and utilities.

In a statement, the company said the move outlined the evolution of its “cellular IoT vision” into four segments, which will be powered by 4G and 5G, as it added Broadband IoT and Industrial Automation IoT solutions to existing offerings in Massive IoT and Critical IoT.

Ericsson said it was looking to use new capabilities with 4G and 5G to help MNOs “tap growth opportunities from industry digitalisation”.

The company also said it is also launching new functionalities for Massive IoT, including better IoT connectivity solutions in rural and remote areas for logistics, agriculture and environment monitoring.

Key focus
Speaking to Mobile World Live, Marie Hogan, head of broadband and IoT at Ericsson (pictured, below) said IoT was a key focus for the company going forward, with it powering half of the 80 massive commercial IoT networks currently live globally. Customers are now calling for it to further expand it’s offering, she said.

“We have a fairly global rollout ongoing now with Massive IoT through the two technologies: Cat-M (LTE-M) and NB-IoT,” she said. “Those address a lot of use cases but are focussed more on the simple use cases, where there is less demand for data rates and latency.”

Hogan added a stepwise approach was needed to address more complex use cases, for example in a factory.

“A factory can require massive IoT use cases, such as logistics, stock management and tracking. But if you want to evolve the digitalisation or the connectivity further, you would need more demanding capabilities to be supported in the network and connect things. In the same factory, you might want the broadband IoT segment to support automated guided vehicles, video communications or AR/VR. It’s really a demand to broaden the portfolio.”

Broadband, industrial play
The company explained that Broadband IoT adopts mobile broadband capability for connected devices, supporting higher data rates and low latencies, compared with Massive IoT solutions.

Specifically, Ericsson said it can provide customers solutions in areas including drone detection, RAN slicing and advanced subscriber group handling, as well as use cases in automotive, AR/VR, advanced wearables and smart manufacturing.

The Industrial IoT play, meanwhile, will enable advanced industrial automation applications “with extremely demanding connectivity requirements”, offering collaborative robotics in manufacturing.

In its most recent Mobility Report, Ericsson predicted cellular IoT connections will grow from 1 billion in 2018 to 4.2 billion by 2024.