GSMA: NB-IoT and LTE-M deployments gaining market traction; Sequans combo module & NB-IoT silicon
NB-IoT and LTE-M Deployments:
A total of 48 commercial narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) and LTE-category M (LTE-M) have been launched worldwide as of the end of April, according to the GSMA. Statistics from GSMA show that 13 mobile operators have deployed mobile IoT solutions, including all of China’s big three wireless network operators – China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom.
South Korea’s KT, LG Uplus, Singapore’s M1, Australia’s Telstra, Sri Lanka’s Dialog Axiata and Mobitel, Taiwan’s Far EasTone and Chunghwa Telecom, Japan’s KDDI, Thailand’s True Corp and Vodafone Group have also adopted the technology.
NB-IoT deployments are currently a lot more common than LTE-M, although some operators including Singtel and Australia’s Telstra have deployed both technologies. AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint have all announced LTE-M. T-Mobile has only announced support for NB-IoT.
Note that both NB-IoT and LTE-M operate over licensed spectrum, which is much more reliable than unlicensed spectrum used in Sigfox and LoRa. Those latter two LPWANs are much more widely deployed then NB-IoT and LTE-M combined.
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Sequans Combo Module:
During an IoT World panel session on Tuesday May 15th, France chip design house Sequans Communications announced that both Verizon and AT&T would be selling their combined NB-IoT/LTE-M module for $7.50. Verizon has certified Sequans” Monarch SiP (system-in-package) LTE-M/NB-IoT connectivity solution. This module integrates Sequans’ Monarch LTE baseband platform with an RF front-end module in the world’s smallest form factor. Monarch SiP was introduced in late February and is now listed on Verizon’s Open Development website as an approved module. Complete details are available here.
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NB-IoT Silicon:
In a recent blog post, Nick Hunn claimed there are 13 companies (now 17) that have announced NB-IoT chips.
If you count up real NB-IoT deployments, it’s still early days. There are probably fewer than 10 million chips deployed. That’s the figure from Huawei, who is certainly leading the field. How many of those are actually connected and sending data back is questionable – the last year has largely been an exercise in getting things to work and spinning the PR. Nevertheless, Huawei is predicting that by the end of 2018 the number of chip shipments will reach 150 million, which, given the focus on NB-IoT within China, may well happen. The big question is what will happen in the rest of the world. To understand that, it’s interesting to look at the different companies which will be producing silicon.
The thirteen companies I’m aware of (please let me know if you know of any others) are HiSilicon (part of Huawei), Sanechips (a division of ZTE), RDA, Mediatek, Altair (owned by Sony), Sequans, Nordic Semiconductor, Goodix, Riot Micro, Qualcomm and Nesslab, along with ARM and ASTRI/CEVA. ARM and the ASTRI / CEVA partnership are IP vendors, but appear to be at a state where they are already behind some of the offerings, so are worth including, as if anyone plans to ship in volume, they’re an obvious destination. ARM is further differentiating itself by offering a wider-ranging IoT service including device management and aspects of provisioning. I need to apologise for missing GCT, which brings it up to fourteen. And since writing this I’ve been made aware of a further three – Pinecone Electronics (who have Xiaomi as an investor and appear to be building on ASTRI’s IP), Extra Dimensions Technology – a Beijing startup and Eigencomm – a Shanghai startup. That further highlights the China centric concentration and reflects the amount of Government support being put in to make China the leader in IoT. So we have a sweet seventeen, with probably more to come.
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Image courtesy of GSMA
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GSMA says the technologies will coexist with other 5G components. Also, that 3GPP is working to allow LTE-M and NB-IoT to be placed directly in a 5G new radio frequency band, and is investigating options for the 5G core network to support LTE-M and NB-IoT radio access networks.
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At the IoT World 2018 conference held in the Santa Clara Convention Center, SUNSEA, a Shenzhen based IoT pioneer, launched the world’s first intelligent IoT cloud module. This new product, based on cloud services, big data and CPS technology is designed to provide end users with smart services such as device-cloud connection, module cloud diagnosis, and predictive maintenance. This new cloud module represents a major innovation in cloud integration and the introduction of the software-defined IoT module.
“The new cloud module not only supports intelligent sensing of module status, remote diagnosis and network condition awareness but also contains a module failure model based on big data to provide predictive maintenance service for modules and devices. The cloud module also enables SUNSEA to provide value-added services to Telcos and MNOs leveraging the massive data collected from modules”, said Dr. Jun Zou CTO of SUNSEA. He emphasized that the new cloud module can flexibly meet the various needs of device ODMs, module manufacturers, MNOs and their customers.
For module manufactures, it provides remote monitoring and diagnosis services to reduce on-site service cost;
For MNOs, it provides service-oriented network optimization, supports fault recovery, and improves network service quality
For device manufacturers, it reduces time-to-market by integrating cloud platform, cellular data plan and communication modules, and simplifying development and maintenance
https://www.geospatialworld.net/news/sunsea-launches-the-worlds-first-intelligent-iot-cloud-module/