AT&T has enabled North America's first LTE-M enabled commercial site in the San Francisco market to support the pilot of AT&T's LTE-M Low-Power Wide-Area network at the AT&T Labs in San Ramon. AT&T plans to make the technology widely available across our commercial network throughout 2017.
AT&T said that LTE-M will offer a unique combination of enhanced coverage and longer battery life with carrier-grade security for a new generation of industries and applications. It will connect a wide variety of IoT solutions challenged by existing network technology. These include smart utility meters, asset monitoring, vending machines, alarm systems, fleet, heavy equipment, mHealth and wearables.
Overall, LTE-M provides lower costs for modules that connect IoT devices to the LTE network, longer battery life of up to 10 years for certain enabled IoT devices and better coverage for IoT devices underground and deep inside buildings.
Participants in the pilot will include:
- Badger Meter – analyze how the LTE-M network, which is dedicated to supporting the IoT, may be used to enhance communications for smart water devices.
- CalAmp – explore how the LTE-M network can help companies more efficiently manage their connected vehicles and assets.
- Capstone Metering – demonstrate how LTE-M can improve Smart Cities sensor technologies. It will look to increase battery life and improve connectivity and sensor monitoring for underground smart water meters.
- PepsiCo -- examine and test ways that sensors can improve the in-store experience with smart vending solutions for the thousands of PepsiCo products consumers love and enjoy.
- Samsung – evaluate an LTE-M-based solution to enhance performance for consumer solutions. This may include wearables or other consumer devices.
The pilot will also include solutions from other technology providers such as Altair, Ericsson, Qualcomm, Sierra Wireless, Telit, u-blox, Wistron NeWeb Corp. (WNC), and Xirgo Technologies.
Chris Penrose, president, Internet of Things Solutions, AT&T
We've joined with Altair, Ericsson and technology leaders from across the ecosystem to launch the first LTE-M enabled commercial site in North America.
Eran Eshed, Co-Founder and VP of Worldwide Sales and Marketing for Altair
Altair has a long history of innovation and first-to-market LTE chipsets solutions; in that sense we find a very synergistic relationship with AT&T.
