The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) has released an update on the number of operators and countries supporting Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT) and/or LTE-M coverage.
Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) is a Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) radio technology standard developed by 3GPP to enable a wide range of cellular devices and services. NB-IoT focuses specifically on indoor coverage, low cost, long battery life, and high connection density. NB-IoT uses a subset of the LTE standard, but limits the bandwidth to a single narrow-band of 200kHz.1
LTE-M (LTE-MTC [Machine Type Communication]), which includes eMTC (enhanced Machine Type Communication), is a type of low power wide area network (LPWAN) radio technology standard developed by 3GPP to enable a wide range of cellular devices and services (specifically, for machine-to-machine and Internet of Things applications). The advantage of LTE-M over NB-IoT is its comparatively higher data rate, mobility, and voice over the network, but it requires more bandwidth, is more costly, and cannot be put into guard band frequency band for now.2
Countries with deployed/launched NB-IoT and LTE-M networks
As of March 2019 GSA had identified:
- 149 operators in 69 countries investing in one or both of the NB-IoT and LTE-M network technologies
- 102 of those operators in 52 countries had deployed/launched at least one of the NB-IoT or LTE-M technologies of those, 20 operators in 19 countries had deployed/launched both NB-IoT and LTE-M
- 22 countries are now home to deployed/launched NB-IoT andLTE-M networks
- 28 countries are home to deployed/launched NB-IoT networks only
- Two countries are home to deployed/launched LTE-M networks only
Countries with operators investing in NB-IoT networks
As of March 2019 GSA had identified:
- 140 operators in 69 countries investing in NB-IoT networks
- 88 of those operators in 50 countries had deployed/launched their networks
Countries with operators investing in LTE-M networks
As of March 2019 GSA had identified:
- 60 operators in 35 countries investing in LTE-M networks
- 34 of those operators in 24 countries had deployed/launched their networks