Vodafone Italia announces an investment plan of over 10 million euros to bring 'Narrowband Internet of Things' network technology throughout Italy.
Narrowband-IoT coverage, which represents a further step towards the introduction of fifth generation networks, started in October with the main municipalities in central and southern Italy and, from January 2018, will continue with the main municipalities in northern Italy, with the goal of covering the entire national territory by March 2019.
The implementation of the Narrowband IoT fits fully into Vodafone's strategy towards the development of the fifth generation mobile network (5G), which will enable a new generation of services from which all customers, individuals and companies, will be able to benefit. Thanks to a greater coverage capacity and a long battery life, in fact, the Narrowband-IoT allows objects to communicate with each other that previously could not be connected, and to fully benefit from the potential of the IoT in specific markets , even before the development of the 5G network in 2020, which will ensure further development of IoT technology.
Smart meters for the efficiency of water systems, intelligent garbage bins that communicate with collection workers, sensors placed under the road surface of the car parks to notify motorists of the nearest free parking space. These are just some of the cases of use of Narrowband-IoT technology, which connects objects in positions that are difficult to access from connectivity and electricity, with applications in the fields of environmental and structural monitoring, precision agriculture, smart cities and smart utilities.
NB-IoT is a new data transmission standard on cellular networks that integrates the characteristics of a Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) network with those of cellular networks on the LTE 2G, 3G and 4G licensed band, allowing:
– low energy consumption with battery life over 10 years;
– the coverage of remote, rural and underground areas through the adoption of techniques that improve the propagation of the radioelectric signal, up to +20dB.
After collaborating with key industry players to define the standard and launching the 'Vodafone Narrowband-IoT Open Labs' in the UK (Newbury), Germany (Düsseldorf), and Spain (Madrid), Vodafone is also opening Milan a laboratory which, with a view to open innovation and co-creation, will allow companies and the Public Administration to test the potential of the NB-IoT, and to try out their applications before the commercial launch, in a safe environment capable of replicating exactly the performance of network technology.
Vodafone has already launched the Narrowband-IoT in Spain and Ireland, where it has developed numerous solutions in the fields such as gas and water metering, for more efficient management of meters and water systems that are traditionally located in wells and cellars that are difficult to reach and connect.
The launch of Narrowband-IoT confirms Vodafone's leadership in the IoT market, where it is present with one of the most important managed connectivity platforms in the world. Reconfirmed in 2016 for the third consecutive year by Gartner as "leader in the Magic Quadrant for managed M2M services", Vodafone is the world leader with over 59 million connected objects globally, and in Italy with 6 million IoT SIMs ( source: Agcom Observatory on communications 3/2).
After the launch of 4.5G up to 800 Mbps in the cities of Florence and Palermo and up to 550 Mbps in Milan, Verona, Bologna and Turin, and the assignment of the metropolitan city of Milan for 5G testing, this investment initiative impresses further acceleration of the development of Vodafone's mobile network infrastructure in Italy, which today exceeds 97% of the population with a 4G network.
