5G GrowingRedCap the device market

With the MNOs market naturally limited by the total number of smartphones it can connect – which is limited by the number of people on the planet – the industry has concocted a cunning plan: RedCap. Paul Skeldon explains

There are only so many smartphones that will ever be in play at any one time. The market then is limited. Sure, we can add more content and services, charge more and encourage even greater use – though how my kids could frankly find any more time to be on their phones is beyond me – but ultimately there is a limit to the growth device makers and MNOs can squeeze out of the mobile market.

The human mobile market that is. Where the real device growth is going to come from in the coming decades is through connecting everything else to the network – building out the Internet of Things (IoT).

For MNOs there is a huge opportunity to connect everything from smart wearables to industrial sensors and they have already begun to do so. Right now that is being done through 4G and 4G LTE (long term evolution), but as the world moves to 5G there is a need for a new category of devices that can tap into these faster networks and deliver even more to their users.

The problem is that current 5G radio tech is too expensive to make this viable – so the industry has come up with a whole new category of 5G: 5G Reduced Capacity (RedCap) devices that can more cost effectively use the minimum amount of 5G tech to work.

Let’s get technical for a moment. According to the boffins at Ericsson, the simplest RedCap device, that is, a RedCap device with the lowest possible complexity, is expected to reduce the modem complexity by about 65 percent for low- or mid-band (FR1) devices, and by about 50 percent for high-band (FR2) devices, while high enough peak data rates are maintained to still serve more demanding IoT use cases.

WHAT DOES THIS DELIVER?

What this means in practice is that a single network – in this case 5G, but it also lays the groundwork to evolve to 6G in time – can be used to connect a raft of devices and deliver a wide range of services. This includes upgrading current LTE-based networks and their devices to deliver the benefits of 5G to things like smartwatches, wearable medical devices, security cameras and VR and AR glasses and other devices.

Of course, there is a massive industrial angle to this too, with sensors and other equipment all being connected via 5G too.

This corporate market is indeed largely untapped and MNOs can start to work their way in here thanks to 5G RedCap bringing new customer and new growth.

In fact, it is estimated that MNOs globally can generate $400bn in service revenue from 5G networks in 2024 – an annual growth of 32% from 2023 –through rolling out 5G Advanced (see page 29) and RedCap offerings.

The study by Juniper Research predicts the benefits of 5G Advanced and RedCap will be instrumental in the growth of IoT sectors, including automotive and mobile broadband. In turn, it forecasts there will be over 360 million 5G IoT devices using public network by 2028; a substantial growth from 35 million devices in 2024.

It identified FWA (Fixed Wireless Access) as the sector to benefit most from these services, given the large amounts of traffic generated. FWA leverages cellular networks to provide Internet connectivity to other devices, often through Wi-Fi.