Apple Watch to Support 5G RedCap; U.S., German, and Japanese Carriers to Launch Commercial Offering
Following Apple's support of 5G RedCap (Reduced Capability) in its latest Apple Watch series, major telecommunications carriers in the U.S., Germany, and Japan will begin offering the standard commercially one after another. Optimized for wearable devices...
2025/10/28
Posted on 10/28/2025
Following Apple's support of 5G RedCap (Reduced Capability) in its latest Apple Watch series, major telecommunications carriers in the United States, Germany, and Japan will begin commercial provision of the standard one after another. The new 5G standard, optimized for wearable devices, has finally entered the stage of actual use.
In Germany, Deutsche Telekom has started offering RedCap on its 5G SA network for the latest Apple Watch. In the country, the Apple Watch will be one of the first consumer products to use RedCap. In the US, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon have also announced their support. However, only T-Mobile has already deployed a nationwide 5G SA network, while AT&T and Verizon are expected to differ in terms of coverage and performance.
In Japan, SoftBank plans to launch RedCap commercial service after mid-September 2025, initially in some 5G SA areas and then gradually expanding. NTT DOCOMO and KDDI, on the other hand, have stated that they will consider this at an appropriate time, and have not introduced the service at this time.
5G RedCap is a 5G standard defined in 3GPP Release 17, which is specialized for medium to low bandwidth applications such as smartwatches, industrial sensors, medical devices, etc. It is faster and lower latency than 4G-based IoT communication standards such as LTE-M and NB-IoT, while also being more power efficient. and power-saving.
With the support of the Apple Watch, 5G RedCap has taken a major step from the demonstration stage to general use. Starting with the wearable market, it is expected to be applied in a wide range of areas in the future, including industrial IoT and medical fields, and is likely to become a new driving force for the spread of 5G.
