Displaying items by tag: NBIoT

Australia’s largest telecom provider Telstra announced a major step forward in the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) in Australia with the successful deployment of Narrowband technology in its IoT Network.

Telstra now offers Narrowband coverage in major Australian cities and many regional towns. This is in addition to the around three million square km of Cat M1 IoT coverage Telstra turned on in 2017. Through the Telstra IoT Network, Telstra is the only carrier in Australia and one of the first carriers in the world to offer both Narrowband and Cat M1 IoT technologies.

Telstra Chief Operations Officer, Robyn Denholm, said Narrowband technology would accelerate IoT in Australia by opening up the opportunity to connect millions of new devices sending small volumes of data at very low power levels over Telstra’s mobile network.

“We already offer our customers Australia’s largest and fastest mobile network and with our IoT Network now we have added the ability to support millions of new devices like sensors, trackers and alarms operating at very low data rates that can sit inside machines and vehicles, reach deep inside buildings and have a battery life of years rather than hours and days,” said Ms Denholm.

“These devices will be the centre-piece of the Internet of Things, which involves enabling everyday objects to send and receive data and will transform the way we all live and work in the years ahead.

“We are already leading the emergence of IoT in Australia – we connect more than two million IoT devices today and offer connected lights, cameras and motion sensors on the Telstra Smart Home platform. We expect the new mobile network capabilities we have deployed will drive rapid growth and over the next five years we forecast we will be connecting four times more devices than we do today.

“This new capability has been delivered as part of our Networks for the Future program, which is a key pillar in the up to $3 billion capital investment Telstra is making over and above business as usual to transform the way we serve customers, digitize our operations, meet the growing demand for data and lay the groundwork for 5G and IoT,” said Ms Denholm.

Telstra has embraced both Cat M1 and Narrowband to give its customers, particularly enterprise customers in industries like transportation and logistics, mining, manufacturing and agriculture, the opportunity to choose which technology best suits their needs.

“Cat M1 is well suited to applications with data in the 100s of kilobits per second with extended range and long battery life, such as a personal health monitor or a device used to measure vehicle performance. Narrowband is better suited to applications sending even smaller amounts of data and operating with an even longer battery life, such as a moisture sensor or livestock tracking device,” Ms Denholm added.

MTS, the largest telecommunications operator in Russia, and Ericsson, have agreed to upgrade the network of MTS. Ericsson will deliver the newest software features that will be continuously developed during the next three years.

The scope of the agreement also includes 5G-ready radio hardware, Ericsson Radio Systems and core network with the latest Ericsson Mobile Softswitch Solution (MSS), as well as User Data Consolidation (UDC), providing consolidation of user data for all network functions.

These solutions will upgrade the mobile networks for 2G, 3G and 4G. In addition, MTS will prepare the network for 5G with Ericsson software for Massive IoT solutions, including NB-IoT and Cat-M1 technologies. This enables a wide range of IoT use-cases including metering and sensor applications.

The agreement supports MTS’s strategy of preparing the network with 5G and IoT-ready hardware to enable a fast commercialization of these technologies. The deployment starts Q4 2017 and total value of the contract is expected to exceed EUR 400 million.  

“In April 2017, in Moscow our company demonstrated 5G technology with peak data rates up to 25 Gbit/sec,” said Andrey Ushatsky, MTS Chief Technology Officer. “Now we have reached an agreement with Ericsson, which will supply MTS with new equipment enabling our network to deploy first solutions based on 5G technologies starting 2020.”

Andrey added, “After upgrade, MTS network will provide higher data rates, increased capacity and low latency. These characteristics are critical for IoT and digital services that we are starting to implement today.”

According to the latest edition of Ericsson Mobility Report, many operators will deploy 5G commercially from 2020, in line with the time plan for 5G standardization. In 2022, the number of 5G subscriptions is forecasted to reach more than 500 million.

The adoption rate of 5G mobile broadband is expected to be similar to that of LTE, and rollout will commence in major metropolitan areas, reaching around 15 percent population coverage by 2022. 5G will enable a wide range of use cases for massive IoT and critical IoT.

“Early deployment of IoT and 5G technologies positions Russia as an early adopter of the most advanced ICT solutions,” said Arun Bansal, Head of Ericsson in Europe and Latin America. “Ericsson supports MTS in the company’s goals to meet growing capacity needs and be ready for huge opportunities that will come with 5G and IoT.

Bansal added, “5G will be a major technology in booming industrial digitalization, creating and enhancing industry digitalization use cases such as immersive gaming, autonomous driving, remote robotic surgery, and augmented-reality support in maintenance and repair situations.”  

The announcement represents a milestone in the large-scale commercialization of IoT and 5G technologies in Russia. It follows the agreement of an extensive 5G Memorandum of Understanding signed by MTS and Ericsson in December 2015.

To further demonstrate the capabilities of 5G and IoT technologies, the two companies will roll out 5G demo zones during FIFA 2018 World Cup in Russia.

Samsung Electronics is launching the Samsung Connect Tag – a new way to keep track of loved ones, valuables and all the matters in life.

The Samsung Connect Tag is the world’s first consumer mobile product to use narrowband network technology (NB-IoT, Cat.M1), a specially designed cellular communication standard for small data utilization, low power consumption and the ability to securely connect to the internet for optimal location services.

The Samsung Connect Tag offers smart location notifications based on a NB-IoT or Cat.M1 network, leveraging full internet services to identify location information for increased family security and peace of mind.

The Samsung Connect Tag will work with GPS, Wi-Fi-based positioning (WPS) and Cell ID, so it can receive accurate location information both indoors and outdoors for effortless location tracking. It can be attached to a young child’s backpack so his or her whereabouts can be tracked, clipped to a dog’s collar so it won’t go missing, and secured the keys so they are never lost.

These tracking and notification abilities will minimize anxiety about the user’s favorite items or loved ones, offering an exciting way to use technology for increased family security and an enhanced lifestyle.

Furthering Samsung’s commitment to a seamless IoT experience across devices, the Samsung Connect Tag will be tied to the SmartThings ecosystem, working in conjunction with the user’s smart home appliances through Works with SmartThings.

The geo-fence feature on the Samsung Connect Tag will notify the user’s chosen smart devices when he or she approaches – so if the user wants lights and TV to turn on while getting home from a nightly run, the Samsung Connect Tag can trigger these products as the user enters the pre-define zone, so the user will get a notification when the child enters the schoolyard or a dog jumps the backyard fence.

The Samsung Connect Tag also offers several key features to minimize anxiety and increase usability. If the user loses car in a large outdoor parking lot, the on-demand function will allow requesting any Connect Tag’s location when desired, simply by pressing a button on the smartphone.

The send my location function will send their current location to their guardian, so even a young child can let you know exactly where he or she is and can go pick him/her up safely. Additionally, periodic location notifications will show a trace of the loved ones location record.

Connect Tag features a compact size, measuring just 4.21 centimeters wide and 1.19 centimeters thick, as well as IP68 water and dustproof rating for durability. The battery can last for up to seven days on a single charge, minimizing the need to constantly swap out or plug in the device.

Nokia and Zain Saudi Arabia have taken a significant step towards the creation of an IoT ecosystem in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the successful trial of NB-IoT (Narrowband Internet of Things) technology at a live site in Mina area of Makkah Province.

"This Saudi-first IoT trial in a live network again shows our strong commitment to bring new services to make people's lives more comfortable and productive,” said Eng. Sultan Abdulaziz AlDeghaither, Chief Technology Officer, Zain Saudi Arabia. “It has been a fruitful, decade-long journey with our longtime partner Nokia in transforming telecom services in Saudi Arabia, and now this successful joint trial accelerates our initiatives in building smart cities across the Kingdom including Riyadh and Jeddah."

In the trial - which used smart metering as a potential use case - NB-IoT was applied to communicate temperature, humidity and air pressure from a remote location via a Nokia LTE base station at 900 MHz, demonstrating the role NB-IoT could play in applications such as smart metering for electricity departments, smart parking and smart waste management. The trial follows the MoU signed by Nokia and Zain Saudi Arabia to collaborate on 5G and IoT development.

"This trial is the first step in utilizing Zain's country-wide LTE network assets to create a cost-efficient IoT ecosystem and introduce new services,” said Ali Al Jitawi, head of the Zain Saudi Arabia customer team at Nokia. “NB-IoT will help connect numerous devices, opening revenue opportunities in many verticals including transport, manufacturing, healthcare, energy, agriculture and home appliances."

 NB-IoT is a 3GPP Release 13 radio access technology designed to enable connectivity to IoT devices. The technology works in almost any environment, with its strong coverage capability connecting devices in hard-to-reach locations and its use of existing mobile networks allowing for the transfer of small data packets securely and reliably. In addition, with NB-IoT's very low power consumption, device battery life can last about 10 years.

In the NB-IoT trial, data was transferred using Nokia's LTE radio platform Flexi Multiradio 10 Base Station and Nokia's professional services expertise, including system integration, network implementation, and care services.

Zain KSA and Nokia signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in April 2016 to collaborate on a major initiative that will transform Jeddah into a model for smart cities in the country and worldwide by 2018.

Turkish telecommunications operator Turkcell has announced that it will rollout Narrow-Band-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) in order to support ‘smart city’ applications and innovations which will be introduced in different sectors all across the country.

The new technology will be used to transform industries such energy, healthcare and education. The ‘smart city’ applications powered by NB-IoT will enable machines to communicate with each other via Turkcell’s LTE-A - infrastructure.

Analysts have suggested that this is the first clear strategy towards 5G in Turkey, and Turkcell’s Executive Vice President, Gediz Sezgin claimed that the economic benefits which will be created by the development of innovative ‘smart city’ applications would be ‘staggering’.

He said, “We became the first operator in Turkey to support NB-IoT required for new-gen innovative applications. So we open the door to 5G. NB-IoT will extend smart city applications and many innovative solutions will be developed. It has been projected that the economy created by this technology as of 2025 will exceed $3 trillion. Offering a technology which will create such a volume requires a very strong LTE-A infrastructure. We will continue to research and invest to introduce the most contemporary technologies.”

The operator has identified solutions in smart parking, smart waste management and remote monitoring as applications that can now be used with the rollout of the NB-IoT network. It has also claimed that new applications will now become available for ‘smart agriculture’ which Sezgin says will transform the livestock industry.

Turkcell’s EVP claimed that the network would allow the application to facilitate automatic irrigation of cultivated areas based on measurement of humidity in order to improve the crop yield - whilst also tracking applications for livestock, the ability to conduct these tasks through automation will ensure the process is more efficient, effective and ultimately easier.

Sezgin says, “This new technology helps organisations by ‘changing their way of doing business.’ While living spaces become more and more connected every day, Turkcell’s mobile infrastructure is now ready for a world where billions of devices connect.

Ericsson will build a Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) system for Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan’s largest integrated telecommunications services company, enabling the island to take its first steps toward joining the Internet of Things (IoT). Chunghwa Telecom will use the system to trial a range of IoT devices and applications in its laboratory.

NB-IoT is a 3GPP standards-based Low Power Wide Area technology that offers significant improvements in areas such as deep indoor coverage, power consumption, device complexity, system capacity and spectrum efficiency.

The end-to-end NB-IoT solution developed for Chunghwa Telecom will comprise a range of Ericsson offerings including the Ericsson Radio System, Massive IoT radio access network (RAN) software, virtual Evolved Packet Core (vEPC), virtual Subscriber Data Management (vSDM), and the IoT Smart Device and Application service on the AppIoT platform. The vEPC is deployed as a dedicated IoT Packet Core, using network slicing functionality, enabling Chunghwa Telecom to explore massive machine type communications use cases and rapidly bring new services to market.

Chen Shyang-Yih, Executive Vice President of Chunghwa Telecom and President of Telecommunication Laboratories, said: “Ericsson has long been our leading network provider and has demonstrated the strong device life-cycle management and integration capabilities that are required for a system of this type. NB-IoT technology is one of our primary focuses in 2017, and we are keen to explore more opportunities based on the new technology.”

Håkan Cervell, President of Ericsson Taiwan, said: “This agreement represents a real milestone for both companies, and shows that we have made rapid progress since signing a 5G memorandum of understanding during Mobile World Congress 2017. Together we will identify 5G use cases and applications for the digital transformation of industry verticals such as transportation and utilities.”

Spanish telecom giant Telefónica and Huawei have announced the opening of an Open IoT Lab to work on the development of products and applications related to Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) technology.

Telefónica´s NB-IoT Open Lab to be opened in Chile in the next few months aims to boost the IoT business ecosystem and drive innovation in the IoT space. It will allow IoT players such as equipment vendors, service providers, end-user OEM device makers and application developers, to deploy faster their services and applications over Telefónica´s networks.

They will also have early access to new IoT developments by combining Huawei resources and capabilities with Telefónica´s well established R&D Centre´s facilities, resources and know-how.

As Hernán Orellana, CEO I+D Chile, said: “This Open Lab will allow us to put Chile at the forefront of technology, especially in the IoT networks arena, more precisely NB-IOT, where our experience is already recognized in the industry.”

This Open LAB will have a permanent showroom in Telefónica´s headquarters in Madrid where the newest IoT solutions coming from Chile will be demoed regularly.

Telefónica Chile’s R&D Centre is a joint initiative between Telefónica and the Chilean government with the goal of promoting an open and participatory Internet of Things ecosystem.

The NB-IoT Open Lab in Chile IoT Competence Centre will be a meeting point for the IoT community in order to foster the use of the new technologies by organizing events such as “plug-fests”, collaborative design and testing, tutorial sessions and co-development programs for start-ups amongst others.

It is a fruitful networking space where different players in the delivery chain can work together to boost the adoption of new IoT services. Telefónica and Huawei jointly deployed the first field NB-IoT smart metering service in Chile during 2016.This initiative enables the roll out of such experiences to many other areas and applications.

Vicente Muñoz, Chief IoT Officer at Telefónica, explains: “Telefónica NB-IoT Open Lab is an IoT space that aims at building a complete ecosystem of partners, manufacturers, technicians, developers and designers to bring the best solutions to market around Mobile IoT networks. Chile NB-IoT Open Lab will accelerate the development of IoT commercial solutions and ensure they are supported by a broad ecosystem.”

Patrick Zhang, President, Huawei Marketing and Solutions Department said, “We are proud to be partnering with Telefónica in the creation of the NB-IoT Open Lab. The NB-IoT Open Lab will strengthen the strategic cooperation between Huawei and Telefónica on technology innovation and eco-system maturation relating to NB-IoT. Huawei will work closely with Telefónica to launch the NB-IoT Open Lab for the continuous technology evolution and acceleration of the commercial deployment.”

China Unicom has identified IoT as its key focus area in order to drive future revenue growth. However, despite China Unicom enjoying growth in mobile traffic, the organization expects to see mobile traffic growth decline significantly in the next number of years and will focus on IoT applications.

At MWC in Shanghai, Asia’s premier ICT industry and exhibition – China Unicom expressed its intentions to accelerate its NB-IoT rollout as parts of its strategic plan to expand its range of IoT services. Shanghai Unicom is a subsidiary of China Unicom and the firm’s General Manager Shen Hongbo stated that he doesn’t expect to see the company generate income from mobile traffic – instead suggesting that future revenue streams will be driven by IoT.

Shen said: “We’re seeing a bottleneck in subscriber growth in Shanghai, and we don’t see a lot more income being generated from traffic. More revenue will be generated from IoT converged businesses as well as content-related operations. We will have to rely on IoT to grow our business.”

In addition to this, Shanghai Unicom’s GM claimed that the IoT sector will be driven low-power, low-speed data collection applications like smart metering. Unicom has estimated that China’s low-power segment is at 3 billion connections – whilst the high-speed segment will be less than 200 million. Shen added: “So we’re first looking at the low-power, extended coverage market. This will be our priority.”

In 2016, China Unicom selected NB-IoT because it felt it was a more mature technology and decided to deploy LPWA technology. Analysts have claimed that China Unicom’s decision to do so was conservative suggesting it was ‘safe to go with the flow’ especially with many operators opting for NB-IoT running on 900MHz band.

China Unicom’s NB-IoT network covering all of Shanghai went live at the beginning of May, and has thus far been hailed a success. It was also disclosed that in addition to Shanghai, China Unicom has launched NB-IoT in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Fuzhou with applications including smart parking, smart fire sensors and smart meter services.

Timotheus Höttges, CEO of Deutsche Telekom, presented to Chancellor Angela Merkel, as part of her traditional CeBIT tour, a technology that can help beekeepers protect their bees.

The narrowband wireless technology NB-IoT (Narrowband Internet of Things) transmits the data collected by intelligent sensors, straight from the beehive to the beekeeper. This data includes temperature, air humidity, air pressure, beehive weight (how full the combs are) and activity of the bees. The beekeeper simply needs to look at their smartphone or tablet app to find out whether their bees are healthy. 

The example shows that digitization can even make an important contribution to preserving a species. A beehive is the world's smallest industrial plant with 40,000 workers on half a square meter. As with Industry 4.0, sensors and Narrowband-IoT continually monitor and provide timely assistance before a bee colony is damaged. NB-IoT already offers a wide range of possibilities and the technology is being further developed rapidly.

This technology is important because “bees are dying” says research. According to figures from the German Beekeepers' Association, the number of bee colonies has fallen in Germany alone from 2.5 million in 1952 to less than one million today. Winter also keeps taking its surprisingly heavy toll on the bee colonies, alarming the public in the process. A ten percent depletion is seen as the norm.

Surveys conducted among beekeeping businesses revealed average losses of around 30%. The exact causes of bee mortality are unknown; possible causes include the use of pesticides, monotonous landscapes, lack of food sources, the loss of the natural habitat of the animals, and parasites such as the varroa mite. 

The CeBIT partner country Japan is also familiar with bee mortality and is getting to grips with this phenomenon in an unconventional way. As part of the Ginza Honey Bee Project, 300,000 bees and eight beehives got a new home on a Tokyo office tower in the Ginza shopping district.

Cities offer bees greater protection, with fewer natural predators in the urban environment than in the countryside. In the very first year, the high-rise bees produced 440 kilograms of honey, which is now sold as Ginza honey in the local department stores or is even used as a cocktail ingredient in a local bar. Even local confectioners have got a taste for the urban honey, with commercial imitators setting up in over 70 locations in Tokyo.

Meanwhile, Japanese researchers are already thinking about a world without insect pollination and developed a mini-drone as a bee substitute at the start of the year. Despite this and similar inventions worldwide, bees are indispensable.

The almond industry in California alone needs 1.8 million hives with around 35 billion animals so that three billion almond tree blossoms can sprout every year. With a current price of 100 dollars per drone, the technical alternative is an expensive undertaking.

Huawei and Telefónica announced on December 23, 2016, that they have signed a strategic Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to work together on jointly developing the NB-IoT markets in Europe and Latin America. The two companies have already started their first trials of a NB-IoT solution and are aiming to start to launch commercially in Europe and Latin America during 2017.

The MOU marks the beginning of a new phase of comprehensive collaboration for the two companies. They will also start collaboration concerning the alignment of end-to-end NB-IoT solutions, interoperability, ecosystems, IoT platform evolution and joint marketing, to develop the upcoming large-scale commercialization of IoT, and enabling Telefónica to boost the number of connected devices in the next 5 years.

The end-to-end NB-IoT solution is designed to meet Telefónica’s requirements for massive IoT services with low-power and wide-area (LPWA) coverage. Developed based on 3GPP standards, the solution underpins flexible networking under various industry and use scenarios. In addition, NB-IoT device and application partners could easily get access to the solution, enabling business innovation and scenario-based customization.

Patrick Zhang, President, Huawei Marketing and Solutions Department, said: “We are very honored to have reached this agreement with Telefonica to cooperate on Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT). Huawei's end-to-end Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) solution, including the IoT operating system (Lite OS), device chipset, network access solutions, and IoT platforms, enables Telefonica to unlock new business opportunities in areas such as smart metering, smart parking, logistics, tracking and smart cities.”