Nokia Corp. added new 5G and edge capabilities to its Worldwide IoT Network Grid managed service today.

The move should help communications service providers take advantage of new opportunities in the “internet of things” without needing to make any significant investment in 5G infrastructure, the company said.

Nokia’s WING service provides CSPs with access to the company’s global IoT infrastructure as-a-service, allowing them to support enterprise customers with enhanced connectivity. Now, as 5G is being rolled out across the world, Nokia wants to give CSPs access to new services the next-generation networking infrastructure will enable in industries such as healthcare, manufacturing and transportation. In addition, 5G may lead to new business models for CSPs, Nokia said.

“Many of these use cases will place unprecedented demands on latency, the volume and velocity of data and security,” the company said in a statement. “WING is architected from the ground up to meet these stringent requirements, leveraging a distributed, flexible architecture that allows seamless upgrade to 5G.”

Nokia added that WING will now enable CSPs to scale up their 5G services faster and more easily. It said operators will be able to manage their IoT devices and services through a global connectivity management platform. To support the new capabilities, Nokia is opening a new 5G WING Lab in Dallas, Texas, where CSPs will be able to connect and test 5G IoT use cases.

The company said WING’s infrastructure is being further enhanced with new Multi-Access Edge Computing technology that’s able to better support compute-intensive services. Those use cases include “cellular vehicle-to-everything,” which Nokia says will serve as the foundation for vehicles to communicate with each other and everything around them, providing 360-degree non-line-of-sight awareness and a higher level of predictability for enhanced road safety and autonomous driving.

The move should help to remove a major obstacle for CSPs that’s so far prevented them from building dedicated, global 5G infrastructure to support IoT services, according to 451 Research Inc. analyst Brian Partridge.

“The features and performance of 5G can help digitally transform industries like transportation, healthcare, and manufacturing over the next several years and CSPs are eager to establish new value chain positions in these markets,” Partridge said. “We expect such managed services that demonstrate success in accelerating the ‘time-to-value’ or derisking 5G investment for both enterprises and CSPs will generate strong demand.”

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