Nokia has launched an edge charging solution to create new monetisation capabilities for smart cities. Nokia’s new Enterprise Edge Charging can be used to to quickly create new pricing and market offers, reducing the time and cost required to set up new commercial opportunities, or facilitate public events such as festivals or large public space events.

The solution is designed around a microservices based architecture that can be deployed in any cloud and infrastructure environment.

Employing AI and machine learning, Nokia’s Enterprise Edge Charging provides cities with greater control over network data that is processed and analysed at the edge. This helps reduce processing costs and improves user experience by avoiding the slower latency from centralised data processing.

It can be sold direct to a public sector entity to help monetise private wireless 5G network, either Nokia-based or other vendor private wireless networks. Enterprise Edge Charging can also be sold to a communication service provider (CSP), which can charge their enterprise customers. The solution is expected to be commercially available by the end of the year.

Enterprise Edge Charging also comes equipped with Nokia’s Monetization Manager. This is designed to increase rating and charging flexibility, and accuracy; and moves beyond the traditional charging capabilities into the billing domain.

In May, Nokia announced new, optimised Core Network software solutions for the field and wide area network (FAN/WAN) needs of public safety and power utilities.

John Abraham, Principal Analyst at Appledore, said: “Nokia’s Enterprise Edge Charging software is a significant announcement as it allows CSPs and enterprises to charge for services at the edge. This enables greater control and efficient charging for traditionally low business value devices and is quite timely given that 5G advanced, edge services and IoT applications are on the rise.”

Jonah Pransky, Head of Charging Business Line, Cloud and Network Services at Nokia said: “With more and more network functions moving to the edge, our new solution better positions Enterprises and CSPs to more flexibly and cost efficiently capitalise on network monetisation opportunities and to better address their customers’ evolving needs.”