Reduced capacity 5G can mean increased commercial opportunity
5G RedCap is short for ‘5G reduced capability’. This standard supports devices which can benefit from some advantages of 5G but which simply do not require full 5G. Full 5G is impractical and needlessly expensive for many IoT use cases, and in many markets 5G network infrastructure is still not deployed. That will change over time as more networks are built, and costs come down – but for a substantial portion of the IoT market, full 5G simply isn’t necessary.
This is where 5G RedCap comes in. RedCap delivers throughput of more than 220Mbps downlink and over 120Mbps uplink which. While this isfar below full 5G’s gigabits of potential speed, it is substantially more powerful than NB-IoT or Cat M1, and comparable to more advanced 4G standards. It has much reduced latency over 4G however, enabling use cases which rely on near real-time data communication.
Adoption of commercial 5G RedCap devices is accelerating as industries and consumers adopt RedCap-enabled wearables for health monitoring and applications such as low-cost wireless sensors for industrial data collection and asset tracking. Developments will enter the market in the upcoming 3GPP Release 18, which will include enhanced-RedCap (eRedCap), which will serve the use cases currently being served by LTE Cat 1 and Cat 1 bis.
5G RedCap also includes the benefits of the 5G core. This measns it can support new features such as network slicing and advanced positioning. RedCap can therefore offer some of the key features of 5G at far lower cost. RedCap costs as much as 80% below the expense of full 5G, while also greatly reducing energy consumption. This blend of advanced network capabilities and lower cost positions RedCap as the natural choice for a vast range of existing and upcoming devices. These range from remote monitoring and predictive maintenance to safety cameras and asset tracking.
The market potential for RedCap is therefore immense. Some research indicates that as many as 18% of all cellular IoT modules shipped by 2030 are likely to be based on the RedCap standard. Read our new white paper to learn more about the implications for your industry, key use cases, what lies ahead as the standard evolves, and how we can help you to realize the considerable benefits of this emerging technology.