The company, which says it is on a mission to democratise IoT, is the key contributor to the new standard which is based on an infrastructure-less and autonomous, decentralised technology that's been designed for massive IoT networks for enterprises.
It has no single points of failure and is accessible to anyone, costing only a fraction of the cellular networks both in terms of price and in carbon footprint.
Wirepas’ technology involves:
- No middleman
- No infrastructure
- No subscription fees
- Free dedicated international frequency
- Dense and massive network capabilities
- One tenth of the cost of cellular
- Lowest carbon footprint of large-scale networks
The new IoT standard, defined by ETSI, lets any enterprise set up and manage its own network autonomously without the need for operators. It eliminates network infrastructure, single points of failure and enables companies to operate without middlemen or subscription fees as well as store and consume the data generated in a way that is best for them (on premises, in public cloud or anything in between.)
“Wirepas opened its revolutionary mesh technology to everyone and the resulting new 5G IoT standard has been built ground up so that anyone, even small and mid-size companies, can afford and understand it. This is the first technology that can cost-efficiently connect millions of devices. It’s the first step towards digitalization for masses with much more to come,” said Teppo Hemiä, CEO of Wirepas.
The new 5G standard supports efficient shared spectrum operation enabling access to free, international spectrums such as 1,9 GHz.
Jussi Numminen, head of RF at Wirepas, explained: “There’s a lot of talk about private networks but this is the first 5G technology which can support shared spectrum operation and multiple local networks in mobile system frequencies. We see this as a fundamental requirement for massive digitalization for everyone. With the new standard you get immediately access to a free, dedicated 1,9 GHz frequency internationally. It is a perfect match for massive IoT.”
Technology-wise the new non-cellular 5G is built on completely different principles from cellular 5G - at its heart is a decentralized network.
In this non-cellular 5G network, every device is a node, every device can be a router – as if every device was a base station. The devices automatically find the best route; adding a new device into the network routing works autonomously as well and if one device is down, the devices will re-route by themselves and providing greater reliability.
A decentralized mesh with short hops and small transmission power also means a significantly lower carbon footprint of the communications system. A recent study by Tampere University in Finland saw an approximately 60% better energy efficiency at system level compared to traditional cellular topology with the same radio energy profile.
The new 5G IoT standard is suited for many existing businesses but will also open up opportunities for new use cases.
“This new 5G IoT standard has been the missing piece in the wide-scale adoption of IoT. We know today only 5% of things that will be connected, are connected. To connect the remaining 95%, we need to let go of how things have been done in the past and dare to go a different route. We see this new standard as the start of a new era for connectivity,” said Hemiä.
