We've all heard the predictions of how the IoT (Internet of things) will connect tens of billions of devices in the near term. In many cases, those devices won't require a high-bandwidth connection. A low-powered remote sensor on a piece of equipment may only need to send a few communications per day, while staying online for extended periods through the judicious use of battery power.
Several years ago, the telecommunications industry standards group 3GPP began work on the narrrow-band IoT (NB-IoT) standard, which is mean to leverage the global cellular network infrastructure. When the specification emerged, critics noted that it was far from ideal, since its implementation guidelines had two variants, reflecting the desires of differing groups of telcos. (Go here for an excellent, in-depth rundown of the issues by Nick Hunn.)
One of the participating telcos, Vodafone, in February announced what it dubbed the first commercial NB-IoT service, in Spain. Now it is hoping to quell rumbling concerns about interoperability around NB-IoT. Here are the details from Vodafone's announcement:
Luke Ibbetson, Vodafone Group’s Head of Research & Development and Technology Strategy, said: “As a company committed to a multi-vendor strategy, we understand the importance of a healthy device and network ecosystem in delivering the best service to customers at a competitive price. We have tested devices from Neul and Qualcomm against Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia systems in multiple regions. All of these vendors’ NB-IoT Radio Access Network (RAN) technology has been successfully interconnected with Vodafone’s IoT core network.”
The release also included supporting quotes from Huawei and Ericsson. Vodafone says it's going to test more devices over the coming months, and will worth with "the wider industry to ensure that NB-IoT has multi-operator, seamless and predictable coverage around the world."
Overall, Vodafone's announcement should be viewed with some healthy skepticism. Again, if NB-IoT is perceived as having interoperability problems, that will impede investment in it while helping alternative low-power IoT networks such as SigFox and LoRaWan pick up traction. Vodafone position is essentially that all is well, despite the conflicts within the standard.
In short, the jury remains out on NB-IoT, but hopefully industry forces will reach true consensus sooner or later, giving enterprises another viable choice for IoT connectivity.
"The future is said to be ubiquitous IoT with every kind of device connected and interactive, but this requires connectivity formats and standards to suit every circumstance," says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Andy Mulholland. "The variations are many between speed, cost, coverage, even battery life, and yet interoperability is the most basic requirement of all."
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