Ericsson has introduced a new dedicated cellular network product, built to address connectivity challenges in industrial environments like warehouses and factories.

Ericsson says its Industry Connect solution will allow communication services providers to offer these markets private LTE networks, “with a clear path to 5G,” and make the technology rapidly deployable for factory staff.

The offering is meant to help meet industrial customers’ needs for reliability and security, with high device density and predictable latency, while also providing an easy network management experience for IT and OT workers.  

Åsa Tamsons, Senior Vice President, Head of Business Area Technologies and New Businesses, Ericsson, said in a statement that the Swedish vendor’s Industry Connect product “helps enterprises to accelerate their automation and operational efficiency to the next level. It complements service providers’ offerings to enterprises with a solution that is easy to scale.”

When it comes to industrial use cases, Ericsson says the new product can enable digital twin inspection with vast amount of sensors; mobility for human machine interface (HMI) instructions for staff; remote control and collision avoidance for autonomous guided vehicles; and collaborative robotics for automated operations.

“The technology case for private LTE has existed for some time now, but with Industry Connect, Ericsson has productized that technology in a way that empowers implementers and operators to deliver the benefits of private LTE to factories and warehouses with a real business case,” commented Pierce Owen, principal analyst at ABI Research, in a release about the new offering.

In other Ericsson news, on Tuesday the vendor announced it, together with AT&T, demonstrated the first network slice with lifecycle management based on ONAP software. Network slices were able to be created using a single click to perform an automated multi-tiered workflow.