NB-IoT: The next phase Tony Sammut Vodafone Group Research & Development
Vodafone and the growth continues 1,400 IoT professionals 54M IoT connections +42% average data usage 10m connected cars 16.2% average YoY revenue growth #1 Rated by industry analysts Over 300 new customers
History Lesson : EXALTED (2010-2013). Water Meters (2012+) Expanding LTE for Devices Water Meter Connectivity Approaches using hybrid technologies are complex and costly Cellular and mesh Short-range, aggregated and backhauled over cellular
History Lesson : LPWA SIG (2013-2014). MWC (2015) Vodafone R&D IoT vision Higher capability Higher cost LTE Advanced GPRS, 3G, LTE Requirement for mobile LPWA solution Special Interest Group Lower capability Lower cost Short range: wifi, Zigbee, Bluetooth,.. Volume of devices Vodafone R&D s requirements : Improved coverage (+20dB cf. GSM) 12 year battery life Re-use licensed spectrum, existing mobile infrastructure Low cost devices (<$5) White Paper: A Choice of Future m2m Access Technologies for Mobile Network Operators (March 2014) Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2015
Convergence around NB-IoT Standard (2015-2016) Vodafone R&D standards leadership Vodafone R&D industry leadership Lead rapporteur for NB-IoT Work Item in 3GPP RAN NB-IoT convergence of proposals submitted by: Vodafone/Huawei Ericsson/NSN Qualcomm Final R13 LTE standard agreed in June 2016, in record quick time for a new 3GPP radio access technology Initiates NB-IoT Forum with GSMA, Huawei & China Mobile @ MWC Shanghai 2015 Luke Ibbetson (Chair) NB-IoT Forum Work Streams include: Open Labs Testing and Certification Device Management Pilots & Trials 3GPP
NB-IoT Technology Pilot with Aguas de Valencia (AdV) Network and Locations Vodafone Spain live network (Moncada town, Valencia Region) with the collaboration of Aguas de Valencia Water Supplier Company Phase 1: pre-standard technology Phase 2: R13 standard NB-IoT technology 70 hard-to-reach smart water meter locations, chosen by the customer 500 messages (100 bytes) sent per device over 24 days approximately 1 per hour IP Transmisison Dedicated Core (Madrid) Internet Application Server All selected sites connected with NB-IoT (including those outside GSM coverage) No user data lost Successful trial of NB-IoT coverage capability and network upgrade GSM 92% coverage NB-IoT 100% coverage
Narrow Band IoT Forum Membership 34+ Mobile Network Operators, 25+ Vendors Mobile IoT
Vodafone completes 1st standard NB-IoT call 3 months after 3GPP standards complete 19/09/16
How are we doing? We are working in an increasingly competitive arena, and the IoT world is waiting to see how the mobile industry co-operates for execution Some context: Standard 3GPP Standard Frozen 1 st Full Standard Deployment 1 st Vodafone Deployment Deployment Time 3.5G (HSDPA)* June 2002 (R5) Mar 2006 (Germany) Mar 2006 (VF DE) 44 months 4G (LTE) March 2009 (R8) Dec 2010 (USA) Dec 2010 (VF DE) 20 months NB-IoT* March 2016 (R13) Jan 2017 (Spain) Jan 2017 (VF ES) 10 months * Largely software updates to existing RAN
Next phase Product development, plan and execute, extend Commercial rollout is underway Spain (largest major cities & surrounding regions), Netherlands Ireland, Germany, Italy, Turkey, New Zealand, Australia. Central core allows further Vodafone OpCos to quickly deploy NB-IoT service Central Core VF OpCo 1 VF OpCo n VF OpCo 2 VF OpCo n+1 VF OpCo n+2 VF OpCo n+3
Vodafone NB-IoT at MWC17 - Demos Metering Smart City Sensors Fiorentini Gas Meter Sanchuan water meter in SEW (AU) IoT Button Tracking NarrowBand-IoT performance
NB IoT Vodafone Germany Active Pilot-Customers & 12
We have tested devices from Neul and Qualcomm with Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia Luke Ibbetson Vodafone Group R&D Director.. successful interconnectivity testing of our system with commercial NB-IoT chipsets and multiple device vendors. Eric Parsons, Head of Product Line, 4G RAN and RAN Mobile Broadband, Ericsson.. all systems have passed successfully through the interconnect test programme and we look forward to expanding the scale of our NB-IoT roll-out with Vodafone. Edward Deng President, Wireless Network Product Line, Huawei
Thank You!