Nokia has hailed RedCap “successful” trials with telecoms firm BT Group and module maker MediaTek in the UK. Without saying much about the tests themselves, the trio took the opportunity to talk up the potential of reduced capability (RedCap) 5G to benefit both business and consumer customers – leading to “potentially billions of new devices connected with 5G”. They flagged its usage in “small IoT devices”, including ruggedised routers and monitoring sensors in the enterprise market, and wearables and health trackers in the consumer space.
Curiously, they also hinted that RedCap may have an impact on the price point and form factor of regular 5G smartphones. A press statement said: “5G devices such as smartphones often have complex hardware and power-hungry features which leads to higher cost, size, and power consumption.” But the thrust of their marketing, and presumably of their tests, is about the IoT market, sprung in the test setup by BT Group’s EE network in the UK – with a vision, also, to resell RedCap services with its developing private 5G offer for enterprises.
But actually, the press note said relatively little of the tests, which took place at BT’s Adastral Park research centre near Ipswich, in Suffolk. The trio have conducted “successful field tests with 5G RedCap technology”, they stated, pointing to the RedCap promise to “simplify 5G devices and support the growth of the 5G ecosystem”. Mobile operators will be able to “provide more services to more devices on their 5G networks”, they said. They used Nokia’s AirScale RAN system, EE’s public standalone 5G (SA) network, and MediaTek’s RedCap testing platform.
RedCap is a significant technology for the whole 5G market. Release 17 of the 5G New Radio (NR) standard, frozen in June last year (2022), which promises simpler 5G hardware and cheaper 5G costs. Provisionally, RedCap sits between eMBB and massive machine-type comms (mMTC) in the 5G NR power hierarchy; it sits two rungs below ultra-reliable low-latency (URLLC) 5G, which affords the headiest view of IoT comms in this 3GPP ladder – more commonly presented as three points in a 5G NR family triangle.
Until now, the thing about these three-pointed specification-types, which RedCap seeks to make into a venn diagram, is that only two are 5G-native. The twin low-power wide-area (LPWA) technologies underpinning the mMTC concept are both LTE-based, albeit compatible with 5G NR radios – and subject to ongoing 3GPP support, as going-concerns for unique IoT cases. Ultra low-power NB-IoT and 2G/3G-like LTE-M, offer support for stripped-back, dirt-cheap, long-life, mega-scale IoT.
So as it stands, and for 12 months yet, cellular IoT needs LTE to make a fist of traditional IoT, at all – and it has a fight on its hands with well-entrenched non-cellular standards like LoRaWAN in unlicensed bands. But RedCap presents a commercial pathway in 2024 for LTE-based mMTC to migrate onto single 5G-based networks. As discussed, in terms of capabilities, RedCap is supposed to plug a gap between eMBB and existing LTE-based mMTC, a couple of levels below high-fidelity URLLC.
But the crucial impact of RedCap is expected to be on the affordability of private 5G systems, and also on the capabilities for operators to serve enterprise markets with public 5G services. Existing mMTC cases are served by a mishmash of much cheaper non-cellular BLE, Wi-Fi, and LoRaWAN technologies, plus LTE-based NB-IoT and LTE-M. Which is why the telecoms market so desperately needs RedCap to come quickly, the argument goes. BT said it is evaluating RedCap to support new 5G use cases for both its business and consumer customer bases.
Greg McCall, chief networks officer at BT, said: “This trial with Nokia demonstrates the potential of RedCap technology in unlocking a new wave of innovation within the 5G services ecosystem. This is especially the case as we move towards the arrival of 5G SA, bringing with it enhanced reliability, responsiveness, security, and speed which – through 5G RedCap – promises to benefit a host of new IoT devices and use cases.”
Phil Siveter, chief executive for Nokia in the UK and Ireland, said: “The introduction of RedCap will unlock new 5G opportunities for many industries, with potentially billions of new devices connected with 5G. Our field tests with BT show that Nokia’s networks are ready to support RedCap devices.”
Robert Moffat, deputy director for mobile business development for MediaTek in Europe, said: “Our collaboration with Nokia and BT for this trial… aligns with MediaTek’s commitment to driving innovation and expanding the potential of 5G SA to include a wider ecosystem of devices and use cases.”
