Mark Kennedy, CTO at Rogers, stated “5G-Advanced will help unlock the full potential of 5G for businesses and consumers”.

The operator is deploying Ericsson’s 5G-Advanced reduced capability (RedCap) software to add new features and capabilities to its IoT portfolio. RedCap enables IoT devices such as sensors, cameras and video surveillance equipment to use network resources more efficiently.

Standards body 3GPP introduced RedCap, or NR-Light, in its Release-17 standard to enable a wider range of low power devices on 5G networks.

On the consumer side, RedCap supports longer battery life for wearables, including smartwatches, fitness trackers and AR/VR headsets.

Last year Rogers and Ericsson teamed up to trial cloud RAN over a commercial network during a Toronto Bluejays baseball game. Earlier in 2024, it unveiled the first successful test of 5G network slicing in Canada by also collaborating with the Swedish vendor.