Nokia, Ericsson and Intel Working on Narrow Band Connectivity for IoT

Nokia, Ericsson and Intel Corporation today announced their support for Narrow-Band Long-Term Evolution (NB-LTE) technology as the ideal wireless connectivity solution for IoT technology.

NB-LTE is an optimized variant of 4G LTE, and seems perfect for the IoT because of its low implementation cost, ease of use and power efficiency. Nokia plans to work closely with Ericsson and Intel to develop and bring to market the products needed in NB-LTE executions.

"We believe in building an ecosystem around NB-LTE to speed up the take-up of the Internet of Things,” said Stephan Litjens, VP, Portfolio Strategy & Analytics, Nokia Networks. “This development will bring consumers benefits such as enhanced and improved connectivity of devices, and at lower cost.”

Because cellular networks already cover 90 percent of the world's population, the three partners think it makes sense to leverage that reach to support and drive IoT adoption through the standardization of NB-LTE.

“Working with Intel and Nokia, Ericsson is driving the ecosystem to accelerate IoT growth and ensuring a global foundation for a vast range of new IoT applications for consumers, industry and government,” said Thomas Noren, VP and Head of Product Management, Business Unit Radio, Ericsson.

Intel intends to support commercial roll-outs of the technology with a roadmap for NB-LTE chipsets and product upgrades beginning in 2016. Nokia and Ericsson will provide the required network upgrades to support an extension of existing LTE networks with NB-LTE optimized for low power M2M communication.

“We are excited to collaborate with Ericsson and Nokia on the next wave of wireless innovation to connect the growing IoT market segment, and to further grow the momentum for Intel's LTE portfolio and roadmap with NB-LTE,” said Stefan Wolff, VP, Platform Engineering Group and general manager, Multi-Comms Business Unit, Intel.