Deutsche Telekom rolls out NB-IoT services across eight countries
Deutsche Telekom is rolling out NB-IoT technology in eight European countries: Germany, The Netherlands, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Slovakia, Croatia and Poland. The international operator has upgraded dozens of base stations in major cities to support NB-IoT using the 900MHz and 800MHz frequency bands.
DT plans to have nationwide NB-IoT coverage in the Netherlands within 2017. In Germany, it intends to roll out NB-IoT in tandem with a hardware modernisation programme scheduled to run well beyond 2017, beginning with Cologne and Bonn, and then other areas across Germany. In other European countries, DT plans to extend NB-IoT coverage to more cities during 2017.
The operator is aiming to launch its first commercial propositions by the end of the second quarter in Germany and the Netherlands. Customers will then be able to order NB-IoT connectivity that they can use, for example, to conduct pilots and begin integrating the technology into their solutions. However, DT believes most customers will wait for the chipset and module market to mature and equipment prices to fall before deploying NB-IoT-connected devices at scale.
Early applications
DT has tested NB-IoT-connected sensors embedded in car parks to monitor when specific spaces become available. Individuals can access that information using a smartphone application developed by DT. One of the biggest German automotive manufacturers plans to integrate the smart parking app into its future cars.
DT is also piloting the use of NB-IoT for smart metering and smart lighting in several locations in The Netherlands, including Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Eindhoven. Moreover, as part of DT’s NB-IoT Prototyping Hub programme, 16 companies are using live NB-IoT base stations to test new applications and sensors in its labs in Berlin and Krakow in Poland, supported by DT’s dedicated software toolkit. These companies are testing a wide range of applications from asset tracking to waste management to beehive monitoring.
Several customers, including energy service provider Ista, indoor climate control firm Itho Daalderop, railway maintenance specialist Dual Inventive and sensor maker Smartsensors, have also said they will use DT’s NB-IoT services. DT has found customers value the additional security afforded by using SIM cards to authenticate devices on a cellular network operating in licensed spectrum. DT stores the captured data in a dedicated secure area in the cloud, which is compliant with European data protection standards.
DT believes the business case for NB-IoT is very strong given the low cost of deployment and the opportunity to achieve enormous economies of scale. However, the operator cautions that the speed of deployment will depend on the availability of high volumes of low-cost modules and chipsets at a reliable quality.