DT Plans Global NB-IoT Push

Deutsche Telekom continues to spread their NB-IoT roaming agreements. DT's targeting further partnerships to boost availability of the technology for its enterprise customers. The company said it had roaming agreements in place covering 20 countries including Spain, Italy, the UK and US. DT also offers roaming using fellow low power wide area (LPWA) IoT standard LTE-M in ten countries including France and Japan.

“With the new network technologies, the Internet of Things is growing even faster. Almost unlimited possible uses offer advantages for industry and everyday life,“ said Dennis Nikles, Chief Commercial Officer at Deutsche Telekom IoT. “Availability around the world is essential, also for stable supply chains. To this end, we are quickly entering into further roaming partnerships, including beyond Europe.“

DT has entered a partnership with The Things Industries (TTI), a global LoRaWAN network provider. Like NB-IoT, LoRa is a narrowband network for IoT. It is based on license-free frequency bands and requires dedicated gateways. Pre-configured LoRaWAN gateways communicate with the TTI device and data platform via LTE-M. The use of LTE-M reduces the costs compared to 2G, 3G or LTE with inexpensive hardware and low usage costs. The gateways optionally support LoRa 2.4GHz for global use.