NEW DELHI: During Huawei eco-CONNECT Europe 2016 conference held in Paris between,Huawei has announced that the large-scale commercialization of its end-to-end Narrow-band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) solution will take place from the beginning of 2017.

The NB-IoT solution will help global operators expand their IoT services into new markets. At the conference, Huawei showcased its IoT strategy as well as IoT industry applications and innovations, and also offered insight into how it worked with its partners to jointly build an IoT ecosystem – including sharing network capabilities with these partners, setting up IoT open labs and promoting the development of IoT standards. By working with global partners, Huawei aims to boost social and economic productivity.

Jiang Wangcheng, Vice President of Huawei’s Marketing and Solutions Department, said: “NB-IoT has unique advantages in supporting IoT applications. Huawei will help carriers accelerate the commercial adoption of NB-IoT and the maturing of the industry chain. In order to accomplish this, Huawei will release the world’s first 3GPP-based NB-IoT commercial chip – Boudica, a system on a chip (SoC) that features high level of integration and ultra low power consumption.

“The SoC can be deployed with lightweight Huawei LiteOS, providing a quick development channel for developers. At the same time, we are also launching SoftRadio, a software suite that allows developers to access NB-IoT open labs via the Internet for remote innovation and commissioning. Huawei is committed to creating a bigger connectivity market so industry players as well as consumers can benefit from new opportunities and services. The IoT project and the success achieved so far fully demonstrate this commitment of ours,” he added.

The NB-IoT Solution was available on a small scale in September 2016. Huawei plans to conduct a large commercial trial in the fourth quarter of this year and release the solution for large-scale commercial use in early 2017.

The end-to-end NB-IoT Solution includes: Smart Device Solution enabled by Huawei LiteOS and NB-IoT Chipset; eNodeB base stations that can smoothly evolve to NB-IoT; IoT Packet Core that supports flexible deployment of Core in a Box and network functions virtualization (NFV); and a cloud-based IoT Connection Management Platform with big data capabilities. This solution is designed to meet operators’ requirements for IoT services with low-power and wide-area (LPWA) coverage. Developed based on 3GPP standards, the solution underpins flexible networking under various industry and use scenarios. In addition, the solution’s devices and platform can be made easily accessible to NB-IoT device and application partners, which makes it possible to rapidly achieve business innovation and scenario-based customization.

In addition to pursuing technological innovation and developing leading solutions, Huawei has proactively built a strong NB-IoT ecosystem as part of its goal to drive a thriving IoT industry. So far, Huawei has helped operators build NB-IoT open labs to accelerate the development of smart NB-IoT devices and applications. Huawei has also released an IoT open lab whitepaper to provide detailed guidance and support for developers to access and use the open labs.

Huawei possesses a wide variety of vertical industry practices in the NB-IoT sector. In 2015, the company cooperated with several top operators, including Vodafone, DT, China Unicom and Etisalat, to conduct service demonstration and testing based on smart metering and parking projects. This year, Huawei has been helping carriers to incubate many industry applications for smart metering, smart parking, smart lighting and smart tracking.Huawei is committed to continuing to drive the prosperity of the IoT industry and the construction of an IoT industry ecosystem.

SOURCE: Voice&Data