Deutsche Telekom has recently deployed the world’s first field implementation of Narrow Band Internet of Things (NB-IoT). The trial was carried out with the cooperation of Chinese vendor Huawei which provided the equipment.
The trial was developed over commercial base stations by software upgrades in order to make them NB-IoT capable. “Deutsche Telekom is an innovation leader and we are the first company in Europe, and one of the first companies worldwide, to have enhanced our commercial network to be capable to communicate with sensors”, Deutsche Telekom CTO Bruno Jacobfeuerborn said. “We support the adoption of solutions for cellular-based IoT technology that are based on worldwide standards and not proprietary ones.”
The German telco said that NB-IoT allows for network deployment with only 200 KHz spectrum and a 20dB coverage gain compared to existing cellular-based solutions.
In the field trial which took place on its network in Bonn, Germany, Deutsche Telekom and Huawei were able to evaluate the capabilities of NB-IoT under real commercial conditions and test the usability of NB-IoT for a first application to provide smart parking to selected users.
“NB-IoT can be deployed by software upgrade SingleRAN network, which significantly reduces network deployment costs. This mode is favorable for smart terminals sharing small amounts of data for a long time“, Huawei Wireless Networks’ president David Wang said. ”Huawei supports all operators, chip manufacturers, terminal module suppliers, and device vendors, corresponding industry cooperation partners in making a concerted effort to promote rapid standardization early 2016 and commercialization late 2016,” Wang added.