T-Mobile Netherlands announced yesterday that it has activated the Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) network across a number of major cities in the country including Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Eindhoven and the surrounding of Schiphol. The Operator plans to cover more locations next month and targets to go nationwide by next year.
T-Mobile said it will together with customers and partners further explore via direct testing a number of interesting applications on the new network. Itho Daalderop, Dual Inventive and Smart Sensors are among the first group of companies to test their IoT applications on the NB-IoT network.
NB-IoT is a 3GPP Rel. 13 radio access technology designed especially for enabling cellular connectivity to the Internet of Things devices, and is designed to combine long range mobile connections with long battery life. The technology is expected to help billions of things connect by reducing costs, enhancing coverage and extending the battery life of connected objects.
ABI Research finds the new 3GPP IoT standards will account for more than 50% of cellular IoT radio node unit shipments by 2021 with NB-IoT consuming more than 70% of Release 13 shipments and more than one third of all cellular IoT shipments - a value which is greater than legacy M2M or the current Cat-1 standard.
Richard Marijs, technology strategist at T-Mobile Netherlands
T-Mobile has chosen very deliberately NB-IoT because this technique uses our own licensed frequency spectrum. As a result, for example, there is no question of interference with other signals. In addition, NB-IoT can relatively easily be activated on our existing network, by making use of the 900MHz band which is also used for 4G.
