The path towards commercial 5G eRedCap has taken a meaningful step forward. At Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona, Altair Semiconductor, the cellular IoT chipset business demonstrated live 3GPP Release 18 eRedCap connectivity using its upcoming ALT1550 modem alongside test and emulation equipment from Keysight Technologies.
Laboratory announcements are common in the cellular industry. This one carries more weight than most, because it involved real silicon communicating against professional network emulation gear rather than a software model or a specification on paper. Altair has confirmed that the ALT1550 test samples used in the demonstration have been running in its labs since early 2025.
For anyone tracking the arrival of 5G Reduced Capability, this is another signal that commercial products are getting closer.
Why this matters
The IoT industry has spent years caught between two worlds. On one side sit the mature low power LTE technologies: LTE Cat-1, Cat-1 bis, LTE-M and NB-IoT. On the other sits full 5G NR, which offers enormous performance but far more complexity, cost and power draw than most industrial devices need.
eRedCap fills that middle ground. Defined within the 3GPP standards, it provides enough throughput for modern industrial applications while cutting modem complexity compared with full 5G. Likely use cases include industrial automation, smart manufacturing, building management, CCTV, smart cities, medical devices, wearables, asset tracking, connected transport and AI-enabled edge devices.
Many of these products stay in the field for 10 to 20 years. As operators reclaim spectrum and gradually retire legacy 4G services, long-term network compatibility becomes a design decision that manufacturers cannot ignore.
The ALT1550
The Altair ALT1550 is one of the first publicly announced chipsets to target Release 18 5G eRedCap with HD-FDD operation. According to Altair’s January 2026 roadmap, the chip also carries 4G Cat-1 bis and LTE-M support, so a device built around it can operate on existing LTE networks today and move to 5G eRedCap through software and network updates as operators enable it.
That backward and forward compatibility is the commercially interesting part. It lets a manufacturer ship hardware now, on networks that already exist, without stranding a product that has to keep working a decade from now. For anyone designing kit with a long service life, that reduces the risk considerably.
Altair set out its long-term eRedCap vision in January 2026, describing eRedCap as the foundation for its next generation of long-life connected devices. The MWC demonstration is the first public proof point on that roadmap, with Altair estimating the eRedCap market could pass 50 million unit shipments by 2030.
Why HD-FDD could become the preferred architecture
One of the more interesting parts of Altair’s strategy is its commitment to Half-Duplex Frequency Division Duplex, or HD-FDD. Rather than shrinking conventional 5G hardware, HD-FDD removes much of the radio complexity that makes full 5G expensive to build.
Altair points to a familiar set of benefits: a lower bill of materials, smaller module footprint, reduced PCB space, lower power consumption, better heat dissipation and improved receiver sensitivity. Those are precisely the characteristics that battery-powered and cost-sensitive industrial devices are built around.
The person doing much of the work to explain this to the wider market is Igor Tovberg, Director, Product Marketing and Strategic Partnerships at Altair. Across recent industry talks and technical articles, Tovberg has made the case that HD-FDD is not simply a cheaper option but a strategic one. In Altair’s own analysis of the duplexing decision, he frames it plainly:
If you choose FDD today, your customers will pay more tomorrow.
Igor Tovberg, Director, Product Marketing and Strategic Partnerships, Altair
The argument rests on more than cost. Altair’s own testing figures, which Tovberg has highlighted, suggest HD-FDD holds a connection at coupling losses of up to around 154 dB using Coverage Enhancement Mode A, where comparable Cat-1 bis devices tend to drop the network closer to 145 dB. On the commercial side, the company puts the per-device saving at roughly four to five US dollars for global deployment scenarios, largely because a single HD-FDD hardware design (a “OneSKU” approach) can cover the IoT bands across FR1 rather than forcing region-specific variants. For anyone scaling from thousands to millions of units, that difference compounds quickly.
Keysight’s role
Keysight Technologies is one of the leading providers of RF test and network emulation equipment. Running a modem successfully against Keysight’s platform matters because it gives manufacturers a credible validation path when they come to build commercial products, and it reassures operators that interoperability testing is progressing before any large-scale rollout. Keysight framed eRedCap as the anchor for the next wave of 5G IoT, describing the collaboration as a route from lab to deployment that lowers risk and speeds commercialisation.
What this means for eRedCap
Here at eRedCap.com we watch developments like this closely, because each milestone chips away at the uncertainty that has held back product development. Until fairly recently, many organisations treated eRedCap as something arriving “in a few years”. That picture is changing.
We now have working silicon, a live demonstration, a published commercial modem roadmap, growing operator interest and testing alongside established RF validation platforms. Taken together, those are exactly the indicators that usually come before commercial module availability.
Industrial IoT has always demanded an awkward balance: low power, long battery life, global deployment, affordable hardware, long product lifecycles and future network compatibility, all at once. eRedCap is looking increasingly well placed to be that middle ground between LTE and full-performance 5G.
The Altair and Keysight demonstration does not mean commercial deployments appear overnight. It does confirm that the technology has moved beyond standards meetings and PowerPoint, and is now running on real hardware. For the industrial IoT ecosystem, that is a step worth noting.
The eRedCap roadmap, including the ALT1550, continues under the independent Altair business.
Learn more
Altair’s original announcement includes further technical detail on the demonstration, the ALT1550 and the company’s HD-FDD strategy: Altair Demonstrates 5G eRedCap HD-FDD Connectivity Using the ALT1550 together with Keysight Technologies.