This week, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) completed the standardization of Narrow-Band IoT(NB-IOT), the new radio technology developed for the Internet-of-Things (IoT). The changes will be included as part of the Release 13 LTE specifications, LTE Advance Pro.
With the completion of the NB-IOT, 3GPP has concluded a major effort in Release 13 to address the IoT market - a portfolio of new Low Power, Wide Area (LPWA) technologies that mobile operators can now use to address their different market requirements including NB-IOT, eMTC and EC-GSM-IoT.
NB-IoT is a technology backed by major companies in the telecom space such as Vodafone, China Mobile, China Unicom, Telefonica, Telecom Italia, Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Nokia and Qualcomm, in addition to the GSMA, which welcomes the standardization of the three technologies in licensed spectrum to address the growing IoT market.
The changes implementing the feature into Release 13 (LTE Advanced Pro) specifications are listed here.
Dino Flore, the Chairman of 3GPP RAN
It took us only 9 months to standardize the new technology after the study phase. Once again 3GPP demonstrated the ability to quickly respond to the emerging market needs.
Alex Sinclair, Chief Technology Officer, GSMA
Mobile operators have already started a number of pilots around the world and this agreement over common standards will help accelerate the development of commercial solutions and ensure they are in market much faster, providing customers with more choice.
