Ericsson launches open IoT platform with China Telecom
Ericsson has launched an open Internet of Things (IoT) platform with China Telecom in a bid to allow enterprises to deploy and manage IoT devices more rapidly.
"The platform offers enterprise customers reliable connectivity based on service-level agreements and a common, unified overview of devices and access networks," Ericsson said.
"With this platform, enterprise customers can integrate their business processes with the managed connectivity service offered by China Telecom to create highly reliable IoT solutions."
The China Telecom IoT Open Platform is powered by Ericsson's global Device Connection Platform, which is part of Ericsson's IoT Accelerator launched in 2012. It now supports over 2,000 enterprise customers and 25 telecommunications carriers in managing their IoT connections across the globe.
Ericsson last month told ZDNet that it is ahead of its competition in trialling and deploying Cat M1 IoT networks; the networking giant is currently deploying a 4G Cat M1 IoT network across Australia with Telstra, with trials under way in Tasmania and Melbourne.
The Australian Cat-M1 network will be powered by Ericsson's Massive IoT network software.
In March, Ericsson similarly unveiled a more consumer-centric IoT ecosystem for operators, networks, and devices alongside Singaporean telecommunications provider Singtel.
Dubbed the Assured+ Consumer Connected Device Solution, the IoT ecosystem was developed jointly by Ericsson and Singtel, and integrates stand-alone IoT applications into a single solution.
Designed to solve the fragmentation of the IoT market and make it more open, the solution provides consumers with an overview and control over all of their connected devices, including personal, automotive, and smart home.
According to Ericsson, the ecosystem will also accelerate IoT adoption across networks and enable a faster time to market for app developers.
In February last year, Singtel and Ericsson also announced their collaboration on enabling Singtel's 4G network for IoT, including a trial of narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) technology during the latter half of 2016.
Ericsson's recent annual Mobility Report predicted that around 29 billion IoT devices will be connected globally by 2022, 18 billion of which will be IoT devices such as connected cars, machines, meters, sensors, electronics, and wearables.
Of these 18 billion, just over 15 billion are expected to be short-range IoT devices, while more than 2 billion will be wide-area IoT devices, Ericsson said.
"The short-range segment largely consists of devices connected by unlicensed radio technologies, with a typical range of up to 100 metres, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and ZigBee. This category also includes devices connected over fixed-line local area networks and powerline technologies. The wide-area segment consists of devices using cellular connections, as well as unlicensed low-power technologies, such as Sigfox, LoRa and RPMA," Ericsson explained.
"Cellular networks are well suited to providing connectivity for emerging IoT applications due to their ubiquitous deployments, as well as their inherent characteristics, which include security and reliability.
"The newly standardised 3GPP low-power wide-area (LPWA) cellular technologies, Cat M1 and NB-IoT, can be deployed on existing LTE networks, and are helping to overcome these challenges. The technologies meet massive IoT coverage requirements and support a wide range of low-cost devices."
China Telecom was also involved in testing ZTE's FDD-LTE Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) solution, powered by its MSC2.0 vector processing chip, at the end of last year.