A new 5G IoT standard: Low-cost network enabling IoT connectivity democratization and sustainability

The new 5G standard enables different industries to deploy ultra-reliable and high coverage networks for IoT and create a more sustainable future.

Allows businesses to create important savings through technology based on the standard.

A white paper by ABI research reveals that the new 5G standard challenges cellular 5G networks and Wi-Fi in enabling companies to build massive low-cost networks for IoT applications. The standard allows use in various use cases across industries with multiple benefits, including, but not limited to, smart metering, mitigating inventory shrinkage, enhancing workplace safety, creating energy savings, and streamlining warehouse workflows. In addition, the standard offers the lowest carbon footprint on large-scale networks, along with other key benefits:

• Low-cost network enabling IoT connectivity democratization: Working on the dedicated unlicensed radio spectrum of 1.9 GHz, without subscriptions.

• Sustainability: The lowest carbon footprint of large-scale networks.

• Autonomous operation: largely autonomous, self-healing operation with automated auto-configuration.

• Shared spectrum operation: Shared spectrum operation and polite spectrum access across all frequency bands.

• Flexibility, robustness, and ease of deployment: Its self-healing mesh can dynamically go around physical obstacles, thereby avoiding connectivity black spots.

The most significant contributors to the standard are a technology provider Wirepas and a manufacturer of semiconductors, Nordic Semiconductor. The first commercial technology based on this standard will be available already in 2022.

The new IoT standard brings 5G IoT networks to the reach of everyone as it lets any solution provider and system integrator to include 5G mesh networks into their offering, set up and manage its own network autonomously without an effort, with no operators, anywhere in the world. At a tenth of the cost in comparison to cellular solutions. It enables companies to operate without middlemen or subscription fees. Another democratizing aspect is the frequency. The new 5G standard supports free international spectrums such as 1,9 GHz. We see this as a fundamental requirement for massive digitalization for everyone. – Teppo Hemiä, CEO of Wirepas