Ottawa-based Martello Technologies has its eyes locked on a 5G SD-WAN future. The company announced it had wrapped up the initial phase of testing of its 5G SD-WAN offering as part of a project in collaboration with the Canadian government's ENCQOR 5G testbed.

Martello hopes to demonstrate its SD-WAN's ability to deliver stable and predictable connections for unified communications and real-time IoT traffic across a 5G connection. The company is aiming the technology at remote networks, such as IoT, and in challenging environments where telecommunications infrastructure may be limited.

Martello's fixation on 5G SD-WAN makes sense. In a recent Gartner report, the 5G wireless infrastructure market is slated to generate $4.2 billion in revenues in 2020.

However, it should be noted that Martello has yet to test its SD-WAN offering on a true 5G network. The initial phase of testing was conducted using a 4G LTE-Advanced connection at the ENCQOR 5G testbed facility. Later phases of testing will reportedly be conducted over a 5G connection.

ENCQOR 5G is funded by the Canadian government as part of the Strategic Innovation Fund, in part by the governments of Quebec and Ontario, and by vendors Ericsson, Ciena, Thales, CGI, and IBM.

"Through our work with the ENCQOR 5G testbed we have an opportunity to engage with many of the world's top technology players, from Ericsson to CGI, in accelerating Canadian innovation 5G," said Martello CEO John Proctor in a statement. "ENCQOR 5G is central to Martello's strategy giving us the ability to integrate solutions at the earliest points in the development cycle and demonstrate Martello's 5G readiness."

IoT isn't a new pursuit for Martello. The company has been focused on optimizing its SD-WAN specifically for IoT for well over a year.

In 2018, the company took part in the L-Spark Accelerator Program which gave it six months to build new products using BlackBerry's QNX operating system for connected and autonomous cars.