Ericsson has unveiled a smart metering as-a-service product as well as software to support large IoT deployments.

Coinciding with the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Ericsson said it had created an as-a-service product to “enable end-to-end business process outsourcing” of smart meter deployments.

“Utility providers will enjoy lower total cost of ownership, reduced complexity as Ericsson acts as a single point of contact with IT service providers, telecom operators and field services companies; and improved quality of service,” the company said in a statement.

Ericsson also revealed a data analytics solution – to be available next quarter – that it said would let companies extract insights from “user and connected device behaviours”.

In addition, the company announced a software upgrade for cellular equipment to enable it to cope with what Ericsson called “massive IoT”.

Ericsson said it wanted to make individual cell sites capable of supporting “millions of IoT device connections”, and that the software update to do that would be offered to telcos before the end of 2016.