Mobile IoT Deployment Guide – October 2022

NB-IoT and LTE-M are complementary radio access technologies specified by 3GPP in Releases 13 to 17 to address the fast-expanding market for low power wide area connectivity for IoT. To achieve global coverage and wide adoption of low power wide area services, mobile network operators must ensure that devices and end-to-end services from various providers will connect to the low power wide area systems that have been deployed and that the data transport capability and connection modes are well understood.

This document contains non-binding guidelines intended to help mobile operators and solution developers to ensure interoperability and smooth roaming. The recommendations have been developed by members of the GSMA 5G IoT Strategy Group based on significant global deployment experience gained since 2017 and practical insight regarding which features have gained market traction.
The guide categorises the variety of features specified in multiple releases of the 3GPP standard into three distinct groups;

• Minimum baseline features required for interoperability
• New and emerging features
• Features not widely adopted

The recommendations provided in this guide aim to achieve the following:

• A quicker realisation of the wider benefits of common standards and predictable interconnect, while ensuring that forthcoming decisions about deployment architectures are well informed, making it more straightforward to enable device interconnect and roaming.

The guide also recommends support for key minimal features, to achieve a balance of roaming service continuity and power optimisation.