T-Mobile Netherlands to Beat Vodafone to World's First NB-IoT Launch

 

T-Mobile Netherlands has revealed that its NB-IoT network will go into service in major cities next week, beating Vodafone to the title of world's first commercial NB-IoT network.

 

The operator announced on Wednesday that the network will be available initially in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Eindhoven, and the area surrounding Schiphol airport. The network will be rolled out nationwide during the course of 2017.

 

Indoor climate control firm Itho Daalderop, railway maintenance specialist Dual Inventive, and sensor maker Smartsensors.me are among the first group of companies planning to try out T-Mobile's NB-IoT network.

 

NB-IoT is a low-power, wide-area (LPWA) networking technology that uses licensed spectrum to provide two-way communication over long distances and in hard-to-reach locations. It can support huge numbers of cheap, low throughput devices that consume very little power. It was standardised by 3GPP in June as part of its work on LTE Release 13.

 

"T-Mobile has chosen very deliberately NB-IoT because this technique uses our own licensed spectrum," said Richard Marijs, technology strategist at T-Mobile Netherlands, in a statement on Wednesday.

 

"As a result, for example, there is no question of interference with other signals. In addition, NB-IoT can relatively easily be activated on our existing network, by making use of the 900 MHz band which is also used for 4G. So we can activate nationwide NB-IoT in a short time," he said.

 

With Wednesday's announcement, T-Mobile Netherlands has narrowly-beaten rival Vodafone to the title of world's first commercial NB-IoT network.