Insights from Ericsson Unwired 2024: our takeaways for the APAC market

Unwired is a yearly online event hosted by Cradlepoint, a global leader in Wireless WAN. The company presents the latest developments in 5G technology and wireless solution deployment to customers and partners worldwide.

This year, the event featured Ericsson branding for the first time, following Cradlepoint's acquisition by the Swedish networking and telecommunications company four years ago.

We have compiled our top seven insights from Unwired to share with the Australian market.

While some of these innovations are not yet available in Australia, stay ahead of the competition by knowing what's coming!

#1. New Ericsson Enterprise 5G Coverage aims to replace traditional DAS

Ericsson has targeted "indoor difficult to reach spaces" as the focus of its new Ericsson Enterprise 5G Coverage solution.

This enterprise-grade solution is a direct alternative to a traditional Distributed Antenna Solution (DAS).

It has one clear benefit and differentiation from other wireless DAS solutions in market - it addresses both coverage and capacity issues - as it is deployed in lockstep with the carriers and connects directly with each carrier's core mobile network.

"This is a brand new solution that Ericsson is introducing to the enterprise space. This idea here is we have a lot of enterprises with very poor coverage indoors. What this solution does is it extends the coverage from macro-networks to indoor difficult to reach spaces," says Vijay Devarapalli, Ericsson Principal Product Manager.

At the heart of the solution is the Ericsson multi-band radio dot system that supports three bands allowing three separate carriers to transmit from the same RAN hardware. 

The radio dots look like Wi-Fi access points and there is a single cable from each radio to a central processing unit.

The radio network connects directly with each carrier's core mobile network. Each carrier can configure and control their portion of the RAN and all traffic - voice, SMS, data and everything you can do on a phone on a public cellular network - will go through the mobile core.

Ericsson has also developed the Ericsson Performance Portal which provides visibility into the RAN pulling KPIs, alarms and other metrics from the carriers and makes it available as both dashboards and raw data.

This solution has launched in the USA with all three main carriers - T Mobile, Verizon, AT&T- onboard.

Unfortunately, it is not currently available in Australia due to our regulatory environment. The Ericsson radio dots are also only available for purchase in Australia by Telstra and Optus. 

Currently, the CEL-FI by Nextivity solutions are the only mobile signal repeater solutions certified for use by the Australian carriers and the ACMA. 

"It's a clear differentiator. There is no other solution out there in the market like it.

"Customers who are looking to replace their DAS system with a much more efficient solution, that costs less, and is easier to maintain - then Ericsson Enterprise 5G Coverage is the way to go. "

Marcus Burton

Director, Product Manager - Ericsson

#2. Traffic steering is improving user experience

Using Wireless WAN has two key advantages over wires - it's inexpensive and it is quick to deploy.

However, limited bandwidth can sometimes be an issue with less important traffic interfering with critical business applications. This can slow performance on the WAN and even cause drop-outs for some applications like VOIP.

SD-WAN is the underlying technology that includes traffic steering. SD-WAN traffic steering with the Ericsson NetCloud Manager portal can recognise over 3,500 applications, look at the packets, and give preference to certain applications over others.

Traffic steering with  Ericsson NetCloud is also possible based on real-time WAN performance.

Using in-line traffic, NetCloud SASE measures latency, loss, available bandwidth, and even cellular signal strength across multiple links. It can intelligently assess the health of each WAN link and its ability to run applications. IT teams can set traffic and failover policies based on high-level business intent, then rely on the routers to detect an outage or a deteriorated link and automatically failover.

Administrators can also drill into what clients and what applications are driving data usage, and then put policies into place to block non business-critical applications at certain sites or steer traffic away from links that are approaching a predefined data usage threshold.

This heightened ability to steer traffic provides improved Quality of Service and end user experience.

We can look at cellular intelligence characteristics that other SD-WAN products do not have - such as signal strength - and actually steer traffic based on those characteristics.

Bruce Johnson

Senior Product Marketing Manager, Security - Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solutions

#3.  Intelligent link bonding is increasing network resilience

Link bonding has been around for more than 15 years, but the addition of wireless and satellite links together with SD-WAN has enabled expansion to new use cases.

There are three different ways that Ericsson-Cradlepoint utilises intelligent link bonding to increase network resiliency: 

• flow duplication
• flow balancing 
• bandwidth aggregation

Most people thinking about link bonding are actually thinking about bandwidth aggregation where two links are bonded together to increase bandwidth. This is useful for large data flows in a specific amount of time, like video streaming from a police vehicle. The limiting factor of bandwidth aggregation is that the latency of the aggregated bandwidth is determined by the slowest of the two links. Thus, it’s ideal to use two links with equal latency, which is often not possible. 

Flow balancing builds on bandwidth aggregation as it allows the administrator to choose what percentage of traffic goes over each bonded link. This can be monitored in real time and adjusted automatically so that one pipe does not fill up. The benefit of this type of bonding is reduced costs. Rather than paying for data to be sent across two links simultaneously, the cost is limited to the single link in use. 

The main benefit of flow duplication is uptime availability for critical traffic. Data packets are replicated and sent simultaneously across both links removing the risk of drop-outs. Another component of these real-time connections is a reduction in jitter. With flow duplication a video stream or voice call will not drop if one link is compromised. 

Intelligent bonding can be simply managed in the Ericsson NetCloud portal utilising Cradlepoint routers. 

#4. 5G Fixed Access is taking off, but private cellular networks are held back by spectrum access

In Australia, we have already seen 5G Fixed Access being adopted across multiple industries as an alternative to wired lines.

However, while 5G FWA has been embraced, the growth of Private Cellular Networks (PCN) in Australia is lagging behind, limited by difficulty accessing spectrum.

In the USA, the Citizens' Band Radio Spectrum (CBRS) allows enterprises to carve out their own frequencies to deploy a private network across a campus, factory, or defined location. In Australia, spectrum has been purchased and is controlled by the carriers.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) released a report in late 2023 addressing the state of PCNs and revealing there are around 50 PCNs in operation.

These are mainly in the mining and resources sector and in remote or rural settings where there is not a lot demand for spectrum.

The report cited spectrum access as a "significant barrier to deploying private wireless networks in urban and metropolitan areas of Australia."

There are hopes in the market that this may be mitigated somewhat in the near future as the ACMA completes its program of allocations of 3.4-4.0 GHz spectrum. Applications for area-wide licences in the 3.8 GHz band of this spectrum will open shortly. This will support organisations looking to build their own private cellular networks.

#5. 5G Standalone is needed to unleash killer applications

Just days after the Unwired 2024 event, in October 2024, Ericsson and Telstra announced a world-first 447 Mbps uplink speed achieved on Telstra's 5G Standalone network. 

The milestone was accomplished in Telstra's live commercial network at its Southport Innovation Centre in the Gold Coast. It surpassed the previous record by over 100 Mbps, setting a new benchmark for global uplink performance in 5G SA networks.

The new 447 Mbps uplink record is a significant milestone as uplink performance is essential for high-definition live streaming, video conferencing, and other upload data-heavy applications.

However, it also highlighted where we are at in Australia with a 5G standalone network.

Telstra first announced  that SA 5G had been achieved in mid-2020, while Optus announced it was switching on SA 5G in August 2022.  

SA 5G is getting turned on gradually in Australia, however many of the benefits are still further down the track, waiting on the underlying transport network to be upgraded.

#6. Two new Ericsson-Cradlepoint routers unveiled

During Unwired 2024, Ericsson announced two new devices - the R980 5G ruggedised router for high performance vehicle connectivity and ruggedised IOT use cases; and the S400 semi-ruggedised router for IOT use cases. Both devices are still awaiting certification by Telstra.

R980 

The R980 is already available for order in Australia. The router is 5G network slicing ready and deploys with the flexibility of eSIMs to allow carrier switching without changing physical SIMs. However, eSIM management functionality does not yet extend to the  Ericsson NetCloud Manager.

The R980 provides threat management, web filtering, application visibility, analytics, and advanced GNSS/GPS functionality such as location tracking and cellular coverage maps. The R980 with SD-WAN provides resilient in-vehicle connections by optimising traffic across 4G, 5G, 5G SA network slices, satellite, and Wi-Fi as WAN.

Indicative pricing is from AUD $1,704 with a 1 year Essentials licence and without A/C power supply or antennas. Pricing is subject to currency fluctuation.

 Download R980 Data Sheet

S400

The Ericsson-Cradlepoint S400 is a cloud-managed, semi-ruggedised secure appliance and router for IoT networks. 

It offers connectivity through 4G LTE, plus wired and Wi-Fi options. The S400 is a small form factor designed for light industrial, digital signage, and kiosk use cases.  

The S400 could be a useful alternative to the S700, coming in at a lower price point and with a higher performance modem. It will also suit the 4G LTE back-up market where a customer wants a more basic failover solution.

For IoT networks — with a handful to many thousands of endpoints — Ericsson’s NetCloud Secure Services for IoT combined with with the S400, provides a comprehensive cloud-managed zero-trust network solution.

With this zero-trust security, any IoT device connected to the S400 is immediately hidden from public scans and from devices connected to other routers.  

Access policies are easily defined so IoT devices communicate only with their authorised resources on a least-privilege basis. 

Download S400 Data Sheet

#7. Cradlepoint transitions to Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solutions

This was the first Unwired event under the new Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solutions banner.

When Ericsson acquired Cradlepoint 4 years ago in 2020, the parent company signalled that it would be looking to expand into the enterprise market off the back of Cradlepoint's established enterprise wireless solutions.

This is now unfolding. 

The Cradlepoint brand will be retired by the end of 2024,  and the transition to Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solutions is well underway.

Aside from ditching the Cradlepoint yellow for the Ericsson blue, the rebrand also extends to the renaming of hardware and software products. 

However, the biggest benefit for enterprise and business is the merger of the world's leading wireless WAN vendor with the world's foremost Radio Access Network operator.

The merger brings the Ericsson vision, research, innovation and deep capability to the Cradlepoint hardware and software solution portfolio.

It also brings together solutions designed by Ericsson for carrier and Communication Service Providers (CSPs) and the enterprise wireless solutions pioneered by Cradlepoint.

MobileCorp is your leading Australian Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solutions MSP

MobileCorp was one of the first Australian businesses to embrace Cradlepoint enterprise wireless solutions back in 2020. In 2021 we were named Cradlepoint APAC Growth Partner of the Year, and the following year, 2022, we were awarded the Cradlepoint Managed Service Partner of the Year title. 

We are one of a handful of Premier Cradlepoint Partners, and still the most qualified MSP in APAC. We have deployed a wide range of 5G network solutions for Australian businesses across a range of industry verticals. Learn more about our Ericsson-Cradlepoint capabilities and 5G for Business here.

Let's chat about your idea for a 5G deployment and see how we can provide strategic and practical support.