NB-IoT-Enabled Bike-as-a-Service in Smart City Space

During the Huawei Analyst Event held in May 2017 in Singapore, Huawei announced their strategic partnership with China Telecom and Ofo to develop a smart bike-as-a-service in China. Huawei will provide the NB-IoT chipset to Ofo bike. Additionally, Huawei announced they will ship 1 million units of 3GPP-based NB-IoT Boudica 120 chipsets starting in June of this year. Meanwhile, The Boudica 150 chipset, with DL of up to 80 Kbps and UL of 106 Kbps, will be commercially available in Q4 2017. Additionally, Ofo is conducting trials in the U.S. (San Diego) and the U.K (Cambridge). Other vendors of the NB-IoT chipset/ module include Qualcomm, Sequans Communications, U-blox, and Quectel, among others.

• NB-IoT GPS tracking device. It utilizes GNSS technologies designed to provide location tracking of Smart Bikes, mitigate theft, and boost efficiency of bike operators in locating their bikes.The device is capable of transmitting location messages of the bike (average of 13 messages daily per bike), and has a battery life of 2 years.

• Customer-centric pick up and drop off point. Enables customers to find the nearest Ofo Bike using their smartphone, pick up the bike nearest to their location, and leave the bike anywhere. That is, customers are not required to return the bike on the same pick up point, and there is no fixed docking station.

• End-to-end Digital Platform. The system utilizes a digital platform enabling commuters to remotely check the availability of a Smart Bike nearby on a real-time basis using their smartphone, electronically book it, and make a cashless bike rental fee payment. The business model of Smart Bike is “pay as you go”, using a payment account that is linked to the Smart Bike service.

Ericsson, China Mobile Shanghai, and Mobike signed a strategic partnership in May 2017 to develop Smart Bike sharing- as-a-service and will conduct pilot launches in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Sichuan in China. Similarly, Ofo, Mobike, and oBike have launched bike sharing-as-a-service in Singapore in 2017. 

Smart bike-as-a-service is gaining traction in Asia and will likely to accelerate the digital transformation of public transportation. It offers a mobility solution that meets the rising number of transportation needs driven by increasing urban population, inadequate public transportation infrastructure, traffic congestion, and mandates to reduce carbon footprints.

Additionally, Smart Bike offers sustainable transportation and is integrated in the public transportation system, providing commuters with mobility-as-a-service options such as ride hailing, car sharing, bike sharing, etc. Moreover, Smart Bikes collect data from cyclists such as demographics data (age and gender, etc.), travel time, and location of pick-up and drop-off point. Additionally, depending on the IoT devices that will be connected to the bike (e.g., sensors), it can capture information such as weather, air quality, and noise. Coupled with big data analytics, it would empower governments to become more responsive to the needs of the community, help city planners improve urban infrastructure, and design data-driven government policies.

Additionally, deployment of NB-IoT can be a viable connectivity technology in the Smart City space.

• Good reliability and robust security. NB-IoT is a low-power wide-area network that runs on a licensed spectrum. It will offer ubiquitous coverage, robust security, and minimal risk of disruptions. Vendors shared that deployment of NB-IoT would be massive and nationwide. Leveraging on existing LTE wireless network infrastructure, and software upgrades on existing base stations, deployment of NB-IoT network would have minimal CAPEX. China Telecom announced the commercial deployment of NB-IoT networks nationwide by June 2017. Additionally, Huawei announced the commercial deployment of more than 30 NB-IoT networks across more than 20 countries worldwide this year, including China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and Australia.

• Wide and Deep Coverage. It offers deeper coverage as indicated by maximum coupling loss (MCL) of 164 dB versus 139. 4 dB achieved by GSM. The coverage gain of 20dB enables massive connections of IoT devices of up to 100,000 connections per cell which is 100 times more capacity compared with 4G and can access devices in harder-to-reach locations.

• Longer battery life. NB-IoT utilizes low power consumption as indicated by lower data rates of up to 60 kbps compared with eMTC or LTE Cat-M1 (up to 1 Mbps) and LTE Cat-1 (up to 10Mbps), and a battery life of 2 years (powered by a 13Ah battery).