Deutsche Telekom takes lead in NB-IoT across Europe and US

Ingo Hofacker, IoT business at Deutsche TelekomDeutsche Telekom today said the telecom operator leads in the deployment of NarrowBand IoT (NB-IoT) across Europe and North America.

NB-IoT of Deutsche Telekom is live across eight European markets as well as the United States. The global telecom operator said it is in the process of expanding its low-power machine network in the US by mid-year and in many of its European markets by the end of 2018.

Juniper Research said the total number of cellular M2M connections will reach 1.3 billion by 2022, representing a 220 percent increase from an estimated 400 million in 2017.

Germany-based Deutsche Telekom has made investment in the sensor network paving the way for innovative and cost-effective NB-IoT solutions in virtually all business areas, including transport & logistics, industrial automation, and the public sector.

One of Deutsche Telekom’s key focus areas for NB-IoT deployment is the development and implementation of smart city solutions based on NB-IoT, as the sensor network is suited for many pioneering applications in this sector, including smart lighting, smart public transport and smart waste management.

IoT technology revenues across 12 key smart city technologies and verticals is forecast to grow from around $25 billion in 2017 to $62 billion in 2026 at an average growth rate of 11 percent, according to ABI Research.

“The extensive availability of NB-IoT network coverage in 2018 beyond the initial city-led pilots we have seen last year lays the ground for NB-IoT solutions to be deployed not only locally, but also nationally and across borders,” said Ingo Hofacker, responsible for the IoT business at Deutsche Telekom.

Deutsche Telekom has rolled out its NB-IoT sensor network to approximately 600 towns and cities across Germany since it was launched in June 2017, with more than 200 companies now trialling the technology already via commercially available test packages.

Deutsche Telekom completed the roll out of NB-IoT network in the Netherlands in May 2017. Deutsche Telekom has brought the technology to six further European markets by the end of 2017.

Deutsche Telekom’s subsidiary T-Mobile has become the first operator in Austria to roll out NB-IoT commercially with the city of St. Polten already fully covered and nationwide rollout of NB-IoT to be completed by the fall of 2018.

NB-IoT networks in Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary and Greece are live already across many cities with nationwide coverage expected in many countries by the end of 2018 as well.

Deutsche Telekom has set up a European Smart Solutions Center (ESC), based in Budapest, to focus on the development and implementation of NB-IoT based smart city solutions in Europe.

Earlier, Rohde & Schwarz said its Mobile Network Testing is paving the way to NB-IoT by providing the world’s first accurate LTE/NB-IoT coverage measurement solution. Rohde & Schwarz, via a software upgrade to the R&S ROMES drive test software, will support NB-IoT coverage measurements with R&S TSMx scanners.

Baburajan K