Chinese telecom gear maker Huawei is in in talks with India’s top telcos for the deployment of narrowband Internet of Things (IoT) technology to address connectivity needs of vertical industries that will help carriers create new revenue streams amid severe competitive pressure.
Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) is a new technology standard, designed to broaden the future of IoT connectivity. Ratified by the 3GPP, a telecoms standards body which works to develop future generation wireless technologies, NB-IoT provides significantly improved network coverage for IoT communications, supports deeper coverage, a large number of connections, while lowering power consumption.
In India, telecom operators like Bharti Airtel and Vodafone have a play in the IoT segment. Both the telcos offer IoT solutions such as location tracker, automative telematics, smart metering, security and surveillance solutions, and managed IoT connectivity platform among others.
Huawei’s director, marketing and integrated solutions, Chandan Kumar said that the company has already conducted smart parking, smart metering and smart lighting trials in India.
Analysts say that the technology is the most appropriate solution for enterprise applications in a range of different areas, from utility meters, sensor monitoring to asset-tracking.
The technology is considered ideal for devices that generate low data traffic, rely on batteries and typically have a long device life cycle. Some key use cases of NB-IoT could be smart parking, smart metering, water meter, gas meter, electric meter, or even tracking kids or path tracking, old age nursing.
Certain IoT services can either be offered by Indian telecom operators directly to retail customers, while other services can be offered by through partners such as government for smart city projects, Kumar said.
By Baishakhi Dutta
