NB-IoT: The next phase
Tony Sammut
Vodafone Group Research & Development
Vodafoneand the growth continues…
1,400IoTprofessionals
54MIoTconnections +42%
average data usage
10mconnected cars
16.2%average YoY revenue growth
#1Rated by industry analysts
Over 300new customers
History Lesson : EXALTED (2010-2013)…. Water Meters (2012+)
Expanding LTE for Devices
Approaches using hybrid technologies are complex and costly
– Cellular and mesh
– Short-range, aggregated and backhauled over cellular
Water Meter Connectivity
Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2015
History Lesson : LPWA SIG (2013-2014) …. MWC (2015)
LTEAdvanced
GPRS, 3G, LTE
Volume of devices
Higher capability Higher cost
Lower capability Lower cost
Short range: wifi, Zigbee, Bluetooth, ..
Requirement for mobile LPWA solution
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)
Special Interest Group
White Paper: “A Choice of Future m2m Access Technologies for Mobile Network Operators” (March 2014)
Vodafone R&D IoT vision
Convergence around NB-IoT Standard (2015-2016)
Vodafone R&D standards leadership
Lead rapporteur for NB-IoT Work Item in 3GPP RANNB-IoT convergence of proposals submitted by: • Vodafone/Huawei• Ericsson/NSN• QualcommFinal R13 LTE standard agreed in June 2016, in record quick time for a new 3GPP radio access technology
Vodafone R&D industry leadership
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
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
NB-IoT Technology Pilot with Aguas de Valencia (AdV)
IP
Transmisison Internet
Application ServerDedicated Core (Madrid)
Network and Locations
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
✓ 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 Membership34+ Mobile Network Operators, 25+ Vendors
Mobile IoT
Vodafone completes 1st standard NB-IoT call – 3 months after 3GPP standards complete
19/09/16
• 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:
How are we doing?
Standard 3GPP Standard Frozen
1st Full Standard Deployment
1st VodafoneDeployment
DeploymentTime
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
• 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
Next phase – Product development, plan and execute, extend
VF OpCo 1
VF OpCo 2 VF OpCo ‘n+3’VF OpCo ‘n+2’
VF OpCo ‘n+1’
VF OpCo ‘n’
Central Core
Vodafone NB-IoT at MWC17 - DemosMetering
Smart City Sensors
Tracking
IoT Button
NarrowBand-IoT performance
Sanchuan water meter in SEW (AU)
Fiorentini Gas Meter
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
“.. 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
“.. 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
Thank You!