According to data from well-known market research firm Gartner, there are an estimated 6.4 billion devices worldwide in 2016. By 2020, this number will grow to 20.8 billion. In addition to Gartner, IMS and IDC have given similar predictions: connected devices will grow several times in five years.
The lack of communication standards has always been an important constraint for the development of the Internet of Things. From chipset to operating system, from gateway to application, all industries and individual national standards are in a row, which leads to the terminal and network can not truly achieve "interconnected". ". In the field of Internet of Things, everyone knows the importance of the unification of communication standards, which requires strong enterprises to promote. Vodafone, Huawei, and French operator Orange are all working hard.
According to Light Reading, Vodafone believes that the emergence of the NB-IoT standard will lead to the demise of its competing technologies Sigfox and LoRa, which rely on the use of unlicensed spectrum to support services.
NB-IoT is a LPWA (Low Power Wide Area Network) solution defined by the 3GPP standard. It is one of the technologies to overcome the power consumption and distance limitation in the mainstream cellular standard setting of the Internet of Things and to adopt licensed spectrum.
But it faces competition from the existing LPWA technology on the market. The most notable of these LPWA competitors include Sigfox (a French company that says it is launching networks in 17 countries) and LoRa (a more "open" system with supporters including French operators Orange and Bouygues Telecom).
In contrast, the Vodafone Group has increased its support for NB-IoT technology through a recently opened NB-IoT lab at its UK headquarters in Newbury. The operator has long been a major member of the NB-IoT Forum, which was established in the second half of 2015 to promote the development of NB-IoT technology.
Developers and organizations that are exploring the use of NB-IoT technology to support commercial services will be able to test their applications in the Vodafone lab.
Vodafone Innovation and Architecture Director Matt Beal said that Vodafone also plans to open such laboratories in other parts of the world, but they do not support testing unlicensed spectrum technology.
"NB-IoT will smash Sigfox and LoRa technology because it means that these technologies no longer exist," Matt Beal told the media.
Photo: Matt Beal, Head of Innovation and Architecture, Vodafone
Supporters of Sigfox and LoRa pointed out that NB-IoT has not yet been deployed commercially, and the cost of technology will remain high in the next few years. But Beal refutes this concern. He believes that mobile operators supporting NB-IoT will have a larger customer base than operators using Sigfox and LoRa technologies, and NB-IoT equipment manufacturers will be based on market NB. -IoT technology's interest grows to price.
Beal is also optimistic about the previous investment problem. He said that 80%-90% of Vodafone base stations use single RAN technology, so only need software upgrade to support NB-IoT.
Technical war
Even so, ensuring that the network can support NB-IoT may still be a relatively expensive expense for operators operating old-fashioned base stations. There are also some voices that the NB-IoT standard will not be included in the 3GPP Release 13 released in June this year, but will be delayed to the future Release 14, which may frustrate the development of NB-IoT.
According to industry sources, the current roadblocks developed by the NB-IoT standard are the intellectual property wrestling between Swedish Ericsson and Huawei. 3GPP hopes to avoid the “Qualcomm situationâ€, that is, to avoid a situation in which a company dominates.
"Don't believe this. (Technical standards) will definitely be completed in June this year," said Luke Ibbetson, chief engineer at Vodafone Group. In fact, Ibbetson believes that the full commercial deployment of NB-IoT will occur in the first half of 2017.
According to Light Reading, this goal seems to be quite reliable. French telecom operator Orange has previously told the media that it hopes to provide LPWA technology network capabilities through the 3GPP standard by the end of 2017.
At the same time, Orange is investing in a network based on LoRa technology in France. Orange executives have hinted that LoRa was only a stopgap measure before the advent of the 3GPP standard, and the operator's strategy suggests that it may be prepared.
Although Beal expects NB-IoT to kill Sigfox and LoRa, it is also possible that the market position of Sigfox and LoRa technology will become more stable, while NB-IoT has been fledgling – especially if its standardization process has been delayed.
A spokesman for the LoRa Alliance claimed that NB-IoT's downlink communication is not as efficient as LoRa. This may make NB-IoT technology less suitable for use in scenarios where communication from the network to device sensors is required. The spokesperson also refused to equate the competitive relationship between LoRa and NB-IoT to the battle between unlicensed (spectral) technology and authorized (spectral) technology, and telecom operators are seeking to avoid frequent interference with the former. problem.
LoRa is now ready to deploy in licensed bands, but the spokesperson said that this would result in an increase in usage costs (because the cost of the licensed spectrum is there).
Although Vodafone seems to never be able to switch to LoRa or Sigfox technology, the operator is indeed focusing on other technologies supported by the 3GPP for the IoT market, including EC-GSM and LTE-M, which can also be used in certain scenarios. effect.
However, Vodafone's greatest interest remains NB-IoT, and Beal described its establishment at the Newbury Laboratory as a “catalyst†for industry development. “This is similar to the construction of the app store in the smartphone world – this is the beginning of the telecom operator app store,†he said.
Vodafone believes that there will be 2.4 billion "addressable M2M connections" worldwide by 2020, and it is expected that 1.4 billion of them will rely on LPWA technology including NB-IoT.
White Shell UFO Highbay Lights,LED Round High Bay Light,Waterproof Round High Bay Lights,UFO High Bay LED Lighting
Vietnam JJ Lighting Company , https://www.vnjjlighting.com