NB-IoT deployment activities

Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT or LTE-M2) was introduced along with with other low power wide area network (LPWAN) technologies in 3GPP Release 13. NB-IoT operates independently in the unused 200kHz bands which were used by Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) deployments.

Owing to several benefits as stated in Release 14 like guaranteed QoS, good indoor coverage, power efficiency and global reach of NB-IoT leads to its large worldwide deployment as compared to LTE-M1. The compatibility of the said technology with 2G, 3G, 4G without the use of gateways makes it a clear market winner.

It is estimated that NB-IoT will dominate 45% of global IoT cellular connections and the total market would reach USD 6 million by 2025. The technology allows transmission of up to 100Kbits/s with enhanced battery life. According to a survey conducted the leading market players of Narrowband IoT are Huawei, Qualcomm, Samsung, Nordic Semiconductors, Intel and many others. Nordic semiconductor in conjunction with iBASIS announces field testing of NB-IoT and LTE-M LPWA across 30 countries. The nordic semiconductor is all set to utilize the single eSIM from iBASIS to mark the critical milestone in the development of NB-IoT.

Despite the standard being a logical conqueror, there are several glitches in the path of deployment of this standard. Still many of the key operators like AT&T, Verizon have been surprisingly numb on any customer launches on their recently introduced NB-IoT market. Some of the major factors that must be bugging them to step up in the market may be power consumption, industrial IoT solutions that are already based on 2G, the cost for the solutions using multiple IPs.