Telenor Myanmar and Ericsson have trialled NB-IoT on Telenor’s LTE network in Mandalay, testing devices and use cases including vehicle-fitted solutions and ambient sensors for business applications. Jai Prakash, CTO of Telenor Myanmar, identified possibilities for NB-IoT including ‘Smart Homes, Smart Cities, Smart Metering, Connected Cars and Clinical Remote Monitoring to name a few’. Eric Timmer, head of Ericsson Myanmar, added: ‘NB-IoT can provide the wide range of opportunities for the development of communities and industry in different areas: education, health, transport, smart manufacturing, environmental improvement, housing, optimising of utility sector infrastructure, road safety and many more.’
Indian LoRaWAN IoT network provider SenRa has reached coverage of Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, New Delhi, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Chandigarh and a total of 30 Indian cities. The rollout is under the framework of the Indian government’s ‘100 Smart Cities Mission’ launched in June 2016, with an approved budget of around USD14 billion for ‘development of 100 smart cities and the rejuvenation of 500 others’. SenRa began its network deployment in November 2017, noting that its project contributes to the adoption of LoRaWAN nationally alongside other operators including Tata Communications. IoT solutions have been deployed over SenRa’s LoRa network including smart water metering, smart street lighting, smart waste bins and smart parking. India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has forecast connecting one billion IoT/M2M sensors/devices by 2020 and five billion by 2022.
Russian triple-play fibre broadband operator MGTS, part of Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), has budgeted RUB1.4 billion (USD21.1 million) to distribute 550,000 Zigbee-enabled IoT home routers free of charge to Moscow residents. The Zigbee connectivity standard is used by various Smart Home devices.
Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Communications & Information Technology (MCIT) has partnered Huawei to launch the Kingdom’s ‘first IoT lab’ alongside a USD1 million fund to support Saudi entrepreneurs, reports Arab News. The lab at Huawei’s innovation centre in Riyadh aims to provide a platform to develop new IoT applications, which will directly target the most important vertical sectors in the Kingdom. Huawei Saudi Arabia’s CEO said: ‘Saudi Vision 2030 calls for the development of the Kingdom into an innovative and globally competitive economy through digital transformation, and our aim at Huawei is to support the success of this vision. We are committed to open innovation and collaboration to promote the IoT sector here in Saudi Arabia and we see the launch of this lab as another milestone in our strategic partnership with MCIT.’
Croatian publicly-owned transmission company Odasiljaci i Veze (OiV) has completed the rollout of a LoRaWAN IoT network covering the cities of Zagreb, Split, Rijeka and Osijek. The company highlights the potential uses for the network as: Smart Cities, Smart Buildings, Smart Agriculture, energy meters, public lighting management, parking control and monitoring, indoor and outdoor air quality measurement, smart waste management, GPS tracking, vehicle systems, motion detectors, smoke/fire detectors and others.
The Belgian Institute for Post and Telecommunications (BIPT) has issued a decision enabling the usage of cellular IoT technology standards in several licensed mobile spectrum bands. Alongside the existing use of 800MHz mobile frequencies for M2M/IoT services, the BIPT’s decision authorises the usage of the 900MHz, 1800MHz and 2GHz licensed mobile ranges for low power wide area (LPWA) IoT networks via NB-IoT, LTE-M (LTE-MTC/LTE-eMTC) and EC-GSM-IoT technologies.
T-Mobile Netherlands is this month launching a smart parking service over its NB-IoT network in Amsterdam. The service involves sensors installed at parking locations connected via the NB-IoT network to assist drivers in locating available spaces using a smartphone app.
South Korea’s SK Telecom (SKT) has launched an IoT-based personal protection device named ‘My Hero’. The lipstick-shaped device is activated by opening its case, whereupon it sends out an alarm, plus a text alert to the police, optional additional texts (with GPS information) to up to five other phone numbers chosen by the user, and also begins recording audio for three minutes.
Lastly, South Korea has opened ‘K-City’, a 5G network-based autonomous car testing site in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport spent USD11 million to launch K-City as a testbed integrating cutting-edge technologies for self-driving vehicles in real road conditions. The 320,000 square metre site, managed by the Korea Automobile Testing & Research Institute, includes a mock town equipped with highways, downtown area, city outskirts, parking spaces, toll gates, city intersections, children protection zones, tunnels, roadside trees and other realistic features. Technology providers including Samsung are involved in the project.
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