Ericsson said the RedCap demo took place in Ciudad Real, Spain, using Vodafone Spain’s live testing 5G network

Ericsson, Vodafone and Qualcomm Technologies have demonstrated what they claimed to be the first RAN Reduced Capability (RedCap) data sessions on a European network.

The RedCap demo took place on September 21, 2023 in Ciudad Real, Spain, running on Ericsson’s RedCap RAN software using Vodafone Spain’s live testing 5G network dubbed “CREATE”.

RedCap, sometimes referred to as NR-Light, is a reduced set of 5G capabilities intended for devices like wearables and low-cost hotspots that have low battery consumption, lower costs and lower bandwidth requirements. Introduced with 3GPP Release 17, 5G RedCap is designed for devices currently served by LTE CAT-4 but provides equivalent or better in performance with up to 150 Mbps theoretical maximum downlink throughput. This technology helps reduce the complexity, cost and size of 5G devices.

The joint demonstration in Spain leveraged the Qualcomm Snapdragon X35 platform, the world’s first NR-Light modem RF. The demo is part of preparations for the introduction of Snapdragon-based commercial devices which are expected in 2024.

“This successful demonstration is an exciting moment for OEMs, network operators and network users, because it highlights a clear path to new devices and commercial use cases,” said Dino Flore, VP of technology at Qualcomm Europe. “The use of commercial 5G networks for lower-bandwidth applications is an important milestone, not least because this offers a migratory path for low-power devices with a 5G architecture, which also draws on the current and future benefits offered by 5G standalone (5G SA).”

Isidro Nieto, global customer unit Vodafone, head of technology networks at Ericsson, said: “5G RedCap opens up new use cases for both enterprise and consumer segments such as industrial sensors, lower cost 5G routers as well as wearables. Ericsson embraces new ways to fully realize the value of 5G services and this joint demo shows that that the support for RedCap is gaining market momentum.”

Ericsson had previously teamed up with chipset maker MediaTek to perform 5G RedCap data and 5G voice calls on both frequency division duplex (FDD) and time division duplex (TDD) spectrum bands.

Ericsson noted that the interoperability development testing (IoDT) took place at an Ericsson lab in Sweden, using pre-commercial Ericsson RedCap software and MediaTek’s RedCap testing platform.

The test involved an FDD data call, which achieved a throughput speed of 220 Mbps in the downlink and 74 Mbps for uplink, and the partners also carried out a TDD data call that reached a downlink speed of 153 Mbps and uplink speed of 13.5Mbps.