Adoption of Global Asset Tracking Solutions Will Accelerate with North American Telcos’ Backing of NB-IoT

On the June 20, 2018, AT&T announced plans to launch NB-IoT in the United States early next year, followed by Mexico by the end of 2019. Like LTE-M, NB-IoT technology will be deployed through software upgrades at cell sites across the United States and Mexico. According to AT&T, NB-IoT is suited to meet basic data requirements, while LTE-M supports Internet of Things (IoT) use cases, which require higher bandwidth for firmware and software updates, mobility, and Voice Over LTE (VoLTE) services.

With this recent development, three major carriers in the United States—AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile—have backed NB-IoT networks. While Sprint has not announced when it will deploy NB-IoT, it will support NB-IoT connections alongside LTE-M. According to the GSMA, there are over 45 NB-IoT network launches worldwide at various stages of commercial deployment. In comparison, there are currently 14 commercial LTE networks around the world, with early rollouts from North America and East Asia. We are witnessing the early stages of the regional network roaming capabilities of NB-IoT in Europe that will eventually ensure seamless connectivity for tracking intermodal freights in logistics and supply chain management. We are starting to witness the early stages of the mobile network operator’s strategy, which is aimed at laying the foundations for the enablement of global roaming capabilities in order to enable IoT services, especially those targeting enterprise customers.

• At Mobile World Congress 2018, Telefónica and China Unicom announced their partnership in IoT to share access to each other’s networks across Europe, Latin America, and China.
• At the same event, Vodafone and China Mobile announced their IoT partnership to resell each other services to their enterprise IoT customers.
• In June 2018, Vodafone and Deutsche Telecom jointly announced roaming trials on their NB-IoT networks in Europe using their global SIMS.
• Airtel, one of India’s largest operators, is in advanced discussions with Verizon to collaborate on IoT in response to competition from Reliance Jio and its nationwide NB-IoT network deployment planned in 2018.Airtel is currently expanding it 4G network coverage across India but has not yet announced plans to roll out or implement NB-IoT or LTE-M.
• In June 2018, AT&T and Nokia announced their collaboration to deliver seamless IoT connectivity around the world. AT&T will use Nokia’s Worldwide IoT Network Grid (WING) to offer IoT service capabilities in more than 20 countries by the first quarter of 2020.

IoT technologies offer operators considerable opportunity, from delivering seamless network coverage and low-power connectivity to battery operated end devices. Asset tracking use cases in the past have traditionally relied on complex and expensive solutions targeted for high-value assets. Low-Power Wide-Area (LPWA) network technologies offer a sound business case to deliver simple, small, and low-cost footprint devices that can track and monitor assets. On July 16, 2018, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project’s (3GPP) Release 15 ratified enhanced cell ID features for NB-IoT and LTE-M devices, enabling enhanced accuracy of the positioning capabilities of cellular LPWA networks. When recent updates are implemented, NB-IoT could also benefit from enhancement in data throughput, with download throughput being increased from 20 kbps to 80 kbps and upload throughput being increased from 60 kbps to 105 kbps.

According to findings from ABI Research's Low-Power Wide Area Network market data report (MD-LPWA-104), cellular LPWA network technologies NB-IoT and LTE-M will connect over 441 million assets by 2023. LTE-M as a cellular technology is typically seen as being better suited to address tracking applications as it has higher bandwidth and lower latency but consequently also consumes more energy compared to NB-IoT. In a recently published Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) report (here), testing the battery lifetime estimation of NB-IoT confirms that devices with a transmit interval of every 24 hours in Power Saving Mode enables a battery lifetime of 13 years. These battery lifetime estimates are for NB-IoT used with a 27.7 Wh C-cell battery transmitting a payload size of 100 bytes at a data rate of 300 bps.

    Source: 2018 IEEE 87th Vehicular Technology Conference

In the short term, cellular LPWA technologies will leverage multi-mode modules with both LTE-M and NB-IoT to mitigate the lack of coverage, with optional 2G/3G/4G fallback in some regions. However, in the long term, as multiple regional operators support both LTE-M and NB-IoT, LTE-M will witness more adoption by IoT applications that require more continuous tracking capabilities with a low-latency threshold, whereas NB-IoT will address use cases that require periodic tracking of assets across multiple regions due to its energy efficiency and lower cost.