Proptivity and Ericsson unleash the power of indoor 5G with Europe’s first Neutral Host 5G network

The new indoor 5G solution powered by Ericsson’s Radio Dot System will erase the barriers between outdoor and indoor connection, enabling tenants, visitors, and enterprises to incorporate high-performing 5G into their business and everyday lives. With neutral host solutions, communications service providers (CSPs) and real estate owners can cut costs while leveraging high-performing 5G indoor networks. The launch starts this year in Sweden.

Proptivity are investing in becoming the leading player in the Nordic and Baltic countries, with a related investment of SEK 3 billion in Gigabit 5G networks during their five year roll-out.

Indoor mobile coverage is already today a critical digital infrastructure as 80 percent of mobile data is used indoors, high-performing connectivity in buildings is vital to attract and maintain tenants and visitors. By using Proptivity’s newly launched Gigabit 5G powered by Ericsson’s Radio Dot System, service providers can unleash the power of their outdoor 5G, indoors. Real estate owners will have a unique selling point towards tenants and visitors. Service providers will be able to connect to a Neutral Host 5G network. Users on their end, regardless of which service provider they use, will have access to high-performing 5G.

Gigabit 5G is compatible with all buildings – shopping malls, office buildings, hotels, airports and more. All 5G devices are supported including robots, sensors, cameras, printers, coffee machines and other equipment.

Traditionally, it has been challenging to deploy indoor coverage. A common solution is that service providers use outdoor coverage for indoor purposes leading to poor network quality for the users. Another solution is that real estate owners or tenants take matters into their own hands and install private indoor coverage with the help of a service provider, which can be both inefficient and expensive.

Also, to have separate indoor deployments consumes a lot of energy, while an indoor Neutral Host deployment is energy efficient.

While Wi-Fi is suited to indoor or local area deployments and use cases requiring high speed, and best-effort traffic, it operates on unlicensed spectrum, meaning its reliability and availability cannot be guaranteed. In use cases requiring highly reliable, low-latency connectivity and/or wide-area deployment, 5G is the best fit.

Mikael Lundman, CEO of Proptivity says: “We see a great need for our offering and are investing in becoming the leading player in the Nordic and Baltic countries with our market leading 5G indoor solution. We have already aligned with many real estate owners on the solution and are targeting deployments of Gigabit 5G indoor networks in major buildings starting in Sweden late 2022.”

Jenny Lindqvist, Head of Central and Northern Europe at Ericsson says: “We are proud to partner with an innovative player like Proptivity. With our joint solution we bridge several challenges of indoor connectivity and bring high-performance 5G to consumers and enterprises, regardless of where they are or which operator they use. This agreement with Proptivity is ground breaking for setting a first 5G Indoor Neutral Host in Europe”.