Bharti Airtel will be soon launching its own narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) network in India. The company is in talks with American telecom major Verizon for a broad partnership around IoT.
Bharti Airtel is planning to push its IoT play by launching its own narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) network in the country. The company has taken this step to tale on Reliance Jio who already has a similar network technology.
“We have been doing a lot of proof of concepts, and are now getting ready for NB-IoT. The network’s team has been focusing on this quite a lot, and are working together with us towards getting ready for our IoT play,” Airtel’s global chief information officer, Harmeen Mehta, told ET.
IoT will be the focus point for Airtel in the next 18-24 months and it has already started its development process in the same platform with the help of Xlabs, which focuses on IoT, along with Artificial Intelligence and Big Data analytics. It is connecting with US telecom major Verizon for a broad partnership around IoT.
The company is currently building its plug-and-play platforms that can be used by its customers. It is seeking startups to develop devices and solutions using its platform. On the other hand, Reliance Jio has already started offering enterprise solutions along with fibre-to-the-home services on a trial basis in few locations.
“These partnerships and alliances are inevitable and will happen. We have an open ecosystem so we are leveraging on partnerships, concepts and collaboration, globally. It’s going to be a big IoT world,” said Harmeen Mehta.
Airtel is also looking to provide services to its consumers through IoT solutions and products with the help of 4G and fibre-to-the-home services. According to Deloitte, IoT market is expected grow in India by seven times- from $1.3 billion in 2016 to $9 billion by 2020.
