Ericsson introduces three IoT solutions for smart homes and cities

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According to the company, IoT is quickly emerging as a very significant agent of transformation as it blends the physical and digital worlds. In the latest Ericsson Mobility Report, 28 billion connected devices are forecasted by the year 2021, more than half of which are M2M and IoT connections.

Ericsson revealed that numerous studies have identified the potential and value of IoT to society, with smart cities and connected homes, including consumer devices, making up as much that value. Driving industry innovations in smart cities and connected homes, Ericsson is launching three IoT solutions:

- Smart Metering as a Service
- User and IoT data analytics
- Networks Software 17A for Massive IoT

1. Smart Metering as a Service

ICT is becoming increasingly critical for utility providers as they look to improve operational efficiency and find ways to innovate and improve customer experience. Smart Metering as a Service enables end-to-end business process outsourcing drawing on Ericsson's experience of enabling more than 42 million smart meters worldwide. The benefits of Smart Metering as a Service include reduced time-to-market, superior meter management and operations, as well as maximum cost savings. In short, utility providers will enjoy lower total cost of ownership, reduced complexity as Ericsson acts as a single point of contact with IT service providers, telecom operators and field services companies; and improved quality of service.

For consumers, smart metering and a smarter, connected grid enables more reliable services, more accurate billing and the ability to control spending - thanks to timely consumption data. It also supports advanced security automation lighting, heating and cooling services - identified by Ericsson's recent ConsumerLab report as areas of high interest for consumers.

Smart Metering as a Service will be commercially available in Q2 2016.

2. Ericsson User & IoT Data Analytics

Exponential growth in the number of connected devices, both from consumers and industries, presents telecom operators with an opportunity to unlock the value of user and IoT data in their network databases. Ericsson's User & IoT Data Analytics allows operators to do that by providing a real-time analytics engine embedded in the subscriber database.

This solution extends Ericsson's User Data Consolidation (UDC) offering, and works for both cellular and non-cellular devices. It can also fetch data from other vendors' network data bases and aggregate them in the analysis. Additional data from external sources can be included and, with the use of secure exposure, cross-industry IoT insights and applications also become a possibility.

As a result, operators can improve internal operational efficiency and expand business toward both consumers and industries. In parallel, they can extend their roles in the IoT ecosystem beyond simply providing connectivity and climb up the value chain.

Ericsson User & IoT Data Analytics will be commercially available from end Q2 2016.

3. Networks Software 17A for Massive IoT

In September 2015, Ericsson announced a suite of software upgrades to accelerate the uptake of IoT, removing roadblocks to mass-market adoption. To meet the new challenges of supporting the coming massive numbers of IoT devices with a wide range of use cases and requirements, Ericsson is launching Networks Software 17A for Massive IoT that supports millions of IoT device connections per cell site. The software-only upgrades introduce newest device category for LTE connections, Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT), to existing network infrastructure, for fast roll-out of reliable, secure mobile connectivity at the lowest total cost of ownership.

NB-IoT is well suited to IoT applications such as metering and sensor monitoring and flexibly scales to support millions of connections per cell site. It also reduces module costs by 90 per cent and provides seven times better coverage. Combined with power-saving improvements, it delivers more than 10-year device battery life while maintaining downlink reachability.

These enhancements complement features available in the previous software release to address the diversity of IoT requirements while making best use of the extensive global footprint of existing networks. The upgrades to LTE and GSM networks provide an ideal platform for IoT growth.

Ericsson Networks Software 17A for Massive IoT will become commercially available in Q4 2016. This means Ericsson will deliver the industry's first complete cellular low-power, wide-area (LPWA) offering to market this year.