07 March 2019

EUROPE - Vodafone will double the number of European cell sites in its 5G Narrowband IoT network footprint by the end of 2019.

It’s claimed this will create the world’s biggest, international NB-IoT network when it becomes available in 10 European countries, including planned launches in the UK, Romania and Hungary. 

The operator has already launched NB-IoT networks in the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Australia, Netherlands, South Africa, Spain and Turkey.

It claims to be the global leader in managed IoT, with 74 million connections and an international network and services platform supporting companies such as Amazon, BMW, Panasonic, Philips Lighting, among many others.

According to Vodafone, NB-IoT is the ‘industrial grade’ LP-WAN (low power wide area network) technology that will provide connectivity for many smart city and industrial applications at low cost and with equivalent security to 4G.

It said NB-IoT operates in licensed spectrum to guarantee service quality, provides “strong” coverage over large areas (even when devices are underground or deep within buildings), and provides “greater” power efficiency enabling devices to run on batteries for 10 years or more on a single charge.