NEW DELHI: Vodafone Idea is set to give a push to its enterprise business by launching commercial narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) services. It has conducted pilot programmes in four cities for various use cases, including smart energy metering.

India’s largest telecom operator by subscribers is targeting a bulk of the NB-IoT market which is expected to grow to Rs 5,000 crore in three years. Vodafone Idea, which has already launched commercial proof of concepts for the services in Kochi, Jaipur, Bengaluru and Chennai, will take its NB-IoT across India in the next 12 months, chief enterprise business officer Nick Gliddon told ET. The NB-IoT market in India is currently negligible.

“Before the first quarter (starting April), we are looking at tapping specific opportunities in smart city and other specific applications … we have been setting up the NB-IoT network with various devices and partners for testing of things like smart water meters, asset tracking, cold-chain monitoring, smart parking and wearables,” Gliddon said. For Vodafone Idea, smart cities will drive growth, along with verticals like smart meters, automotive tracking and utilities, the executive said.

NB-IoT is a new technology standard, designed to broaden the future of IoT connectivity, providing significantly improved and deeper network coverage for communication between machines while lowering power consumption by devices. Vodafone Idea is focusing on NB-IoT because it was a global GSMA standard, which would help bring the device costs down as the ecosystem grows in scale, Gliddon said. Rival Reliance Jio Infocomm last year launched an NB-IoT network with a commercial network available in Mumbai. Bharti Airtel, too, is conducting NB-IoT pilots and is planning to launch commercial services soon.

Source: gadgetsnow.com