UAE telco Etisalat, known as e&, says it has become the first telecom operator globally to announce the successful testing of eRedCap on its live network.

This achievement demonstrates a practical pathway for enterprises and public-sector organisations to move widely deployed IoT applications from legacy LTE technologies onto a simpler, more energy-efficient 5G-native IoT platform.

ERedCap (enhanced reduced capability) is designed to support a large number of connected devices that do not require the full performance of 5G. This technology is suited to smart utility meters, industrial sensors and controllers, asset and fleet tracking, payment terminals, building-management systems, security devices, and selected wearables. It gives organisations the coverage, battery life and cost profile needed for large-scale deployments, while providing a future-ready route into the 5G-Advanced ecosystem.

“The value of eRedCap is the ability to bring practical, everyday IoT applications into the 5G era at the right cost, power profile and coverage,” said Abdulrahman Al Humaidan, senior vice president at e& UAE (www.eand.com). “By proving this capability on our live commercial network, e& UAE is giving utilities, manufacturers, logistics providers, smart-city operators and other sectors a credible path to scale connected devices and prepare for the industry’s long-term transition beyond LTE.”

For the industry, eRedCap can reduce network and device fragmentation, helping simplify deployment, lower complexity and improve scalability across IoT ecosystems. Enterprises can progressively consolidate more IoT use cases on 5G Standalone rather than maintaining separate technology paths for high-performance 5G and LTE-based IoT. This can simplify device lifecycle management, strengthen security and service assurance, and support the long-term refarming of LTE spectrum without requiring every application to use full-capability 5G hardware.

ERedCap builds on RedCap’s power-saving features, enabling a more sustainable environment with massive IoT connectivity and extended battery life for IoT devices as well. Due to the low peak data rates and a narrower 5MHz channel, the battery life of an IoT device improves from one to three years for RedCap to five to ten years, which is comparable with LPWA technologies. ERedCap matches LTE Cat-1 and Cat-1bis in cost, coverage and battery life, providing a 5G Standalone (5G-SA)-native replacement for legacy IoT devices and supporting the industry’s transition to more energy-efficient networks as LTE sunsets in the future.

The live commercial test demonstrated eRedCap’s capability to deliver throughput speeds of up to 10Mbit/ps on low capability eRedCap devices while using a 5MHz narrow bandwidth of a NR-FDD spectrum. A data transmission unit (DTU) was integrated into the live commercial network to verify the eRedCap’s services.