GSMA Announces The Launch Of Several LPWA Rollouts For IoT

The Groupe Spéciale Mobile Association (GSMA) announced Monday that its Mobile IoT Initiative was gaining traction with multiple commercial rollouts of Low Power, Wide Area (LPWA) solutions by several mobile operators including AT&T, China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom (DT), Verizon and Vodafone.

In a press release, the GSMA said China Mobile and China Unicom had launched NarrowBand Internet of Things (NB-IoT) capabilities across several key cities, and China Telecom implemented NB-IoT networks across the country. Vodafone launched NB-IoT in Spain and the Netherlands, DT in several cities in Germany and nationwide in the Netherlands, and AT&T and Verizon previously announced nationwide launches of long term evolution (LTE-M) technology.

In addition to these deployments, the GSMA announced its Mobile IoT Innovators program — which is designed to encourage the development of new LPWA solutions — had reached more than 500 members.

“The Mobile IoT Initiative encouraged the market to adopt licensed LPWA networks, and we are now seeing this work come to fruition with multiple commercial deployments around the world as well as the availability of hundreds of different applications and solutions,” said Alex Sinclair, chief technology officer at GSMA. “It is clear that the market sees the benefit of adopting solutions that offer flexibility, security, lower costs and cover all use cases, and we look forward to seeing other operators follow in the near future.”

Citing market research firm Gartner, the GSMA said China is set to be one of the leading LPWA markets, accounting for 486 million of the estimated 3.1 billion connections globally by 2025. China is also at the forefront of global Mobile IoT development in terms of both network launches and number of partners.

China Mobile launched NB-IoT networks in several cities including Yingtan, and China Unicom rolled out NB-IoT networks in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Fuzhou for various smart solutions such as parking, fire sensors and meters.