Deutsche Telekom will launch narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) in eight European countries in 2017, it has confirmed, including extended rollout of the technology in its home market.
The Germany-based operator has earmarked launches in Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia and Croatia.
The Europe-wide push comes four months after Deutsche Telekom debuted an NB-IoT end-to-end system and smart parking application in Bonn, in Germany.
It is running further pilots with large customers in smart metering, smart parking and asset tracking in Germany. It will make the technology more widely available in its home market during the second quarter of 2017.
Meanwhile, it will complete the nationwide launch of its NB-IoT network in the Netherlands later in 2017, with several customers, including indoor climate specialist Itho Daalderop, railway maintenance specialist Dual Inventive and sensor maker Smartsensors, already signed up to use the network.
Deutsche Telekom will extend existing NB-IoT coverage to cities in Austria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia during 2017, it said.
Claudia Nemat, Board Member for Technology and Innovation at Deutsche Telekom, said: “As the first company to push NB-IoT across Europe, we are proud to provide further evidence of Deutsche Telekom’s technology leadership.
“We will continue to upgrade our base stations throughout Europe to support NarrowBand-IoT using the 900MHz and 800MHz frequency. The technology has achieved the promised 20dB improvement in coverage and we are confident that our customers now quickly realize the advantages of harnessing the benefits that NB-IoT provides to remain at the forefront of innovation.”
Deutsche Telekom is working with Germany-based energy service provider ista, which operates 15 million connected devices in European homes, on a new NB-IoT project that will initially focus on the intelligent recording, visualization and billing of energy consumption.
Jochen Schein, Chief Operating Officer at ista, said: “We see a clear trend towards smart building among customers in the housing sector. Demand from owners and landlords for networked digital devices is growing steadily. Around 400,000 of these devices are currently being added to the ista portfolio every month.”
Deutsche Telekom said its NB-IoT Prototyping Hub, launched last year, has so far attracted over 100 developers.
It has published examples of new NB-IoT prototyping collaborations, including a beehive monitoring solution, smart solutions for waste management and electronic bin identification, and remote management of street lighting.