A major milestone was achieved this week in RAN (Plenary meeting #69) with the decision to standardize NB-IOT, a new narrowband radio technology to address the requirements of the Internet of Things (IoT). The new technology will provide improved indoor coverage, support of massive number of low throughput devices, low delay sensitivity, ultra-low device cost, low device power consumption and optimized network architecture.

The technology can be deployed “in-band”, utilizing resource blocks within a normal LTE carrier, or in the unused resource blocks within a LTE carrier’s guard-band, or “standalone” for deployments in dedicated spectrum.

NB-IoT is also particularly suitable for the re-farming of GSM channels. “It took us some twists and turns to get there, but we have now set a clear path in Release 13 to meet the needs of the 3GPP industry to further address the promising IoT market.” Dino Flore, the Chairman of 3GPP RAN said, adding; “We entered the meeting with competing technology proposals for standardization. After lengthy discussions we came up with a harmonized technology proposal with very broad industry support as can be seen from the number of companies supporting the approved Work Item”.

Further Reading:

• The approved Work Item description on NB-IOT is available in RP-151621. 
• IoT Standards Part II: 3GPP Standards, by Sami TABBANE (ITU training, 2018)

Contact for this article: Kevin FLYNN, Marketing and Communications Officer, 3GPP