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!