Deutsche Telekom today said it completed the rollout of its 5G-ready LTE -M network across Germany.
Deutsche Telekom’s LTE-M is commercially available in both post-paid and pre-paid IoT offerings, including its Business Smart Connect LPWA and M2M tariffs. Deutsche Telekom completed first certifications of a handful of LTE-M chipsets and modules, enabling faster user time-to-market and connectivity quality.

LTE-M gives our customers the opportunity to develop new solutions,” says Rami Avidan, CEO of Deutsche Telekom IoT.

LTE-M IoT technology bridges the gap between the existing 4G offering and NarrowBand IoT. LTE-M enables new use cases across a multitude of industry sectors, most notably in the areas of smart city, wearables, e-health and smart tracking.

In comparison to NB-IoT, LTE-M offers higher data rates (up to 350 kbit/s), lower latency, connected mobility, and SMS support. In comparison to legacy M2M technologies like 2G, 3G and standard LTE, LTE-M offers optimized energy consumption and better indoor coverage, as well as up to a 50 percent lower module cost.

The 5G-ready LTE-M only requires a software update in the network. The NB-IoT and LTE-M technologies will be evolving as part of the 3GPP 5G specifications. This means that all users can leverage existing investments as part of the 5G evolution.

Deutsche Telekom and its Roaming Partner Orange in France and Belgium have agreed to activate LTE-M Roaming across their respective networks, enabling their IoT customers to take full advantage of the power-efficient technology across borders.