Swedish telecommunications multinational Ericsson will launch three Internet of Things (IoT) service offerings – smart metering, IoT data analytics services and Narrowband IoT network software – this year to enable consumers, companies and industry to use such systems, the company states in a Nasdaq stock exchange statement.

The services are designed to support smart homes and cities, with the data analytics offering allowing for controlled access to and exposure of data from sensors and smart devices.

Ericsson notes that the offerings will enable communication service providers and utility companies to address services and requirements in the fast-growing IoT market. Its IoT services will be available in the country during the second quarter.

“Information and communication technology is becoming increasingly critical for utility providers to improve operational efficiency and customer experience,” the firm says.

Smart metering provides end-to-end business process outsourcing for companies and is grounded in Ericsson’s experience of supporting more than 42-million smart meters worldwide.

“The benefits of smart metering include reduced time to market, improved meter management and operations, as well as cost savings. Quality of service is also improved and complexity reduced by this offering.”

For consumers, smart metering and a smart grid mean more reliable services, accurate billing and control over spending, owing to accurate consumption data. Smart metering also supports advanced security and automation of lighting, heating and cooling, which were identified by Ericsson’s ‘ConsumerLab’ report as areas of high interest for consumers.

Ericsson will also launch its user and IoT data analytics services and software to businesses and industry to “unlock the value of user and IoT data in their network databases”.

The analytics services enables operators to provide a real-time analytics engine embedded in the subscriber database; the software aims to drive the mass-market adoption of IoT technologies.

“This solution extends the user data consolidation offering, and can also retrieve data from partner and external network databases, if shared, and aggregate them in the analysis. Additional data from external sources can be included and, with the use of secure-exposure, cross-industry IoT insights and applications also becoming a possibility.”

As a result, operators can improve internal operational efficiency and expand business towards consumers and industries. They can simultaneously expand their roles in the IoT ecosystem beyond providing connectivity and provide additional value-added services.

The analytics services will be launched towards the end of the year and will provide large-scale IoT support software systems.

“To meet the new challenges of supporting the expected numbers of IoT devices, which will have a wide range of uses and requirements, the Networks Software 17A for large-scale IoT can support millions of IoT device connections per cell site.

“The software-only upgrades introduce new device categories for long-term evolution (LTE) connections, called Narrowband-IoT, to existing network infrastructure and allow for the fast roll-out of reliable and secure mobile connectivity for millions of connections per cell site at the lowest cost possible.”

Narrowband-IoT is well suited to various IoT applications, such as metering and sensor monitoring, and scales flexibly up to millions of connections, reduces module costs by 90% and provides better coverage.

“Ericsson will deliver the first complete cellular low-power, wide-area offering to markets this year.”

The upgrades to cellular LTE and GSM networks provide an ideal platform for IoT growth, the firm concludes.