Telecom Italia’s NB-IoT network will cover three-quarters of country by end of month, the company claims.
Italian mobile operator Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) has launched its new narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) network in 5,000 municipalities across Italy. The technology will be available to 75 percent of its 4G LTE network by the end of October.
The mobile operator said it planned to finish a full nationwide rollout of the IoT network in January 2018.
Last April, TIM carried out a field test on the first smart water meter capable of automatically sending meter readings via the live NB-IoT network. This test was carried out by Olivetti and SMAT (Società Metropolitana Acque Torino), the water authority for the northern city of Turin.
The operator said that the availability of the NB-IoT service in Italy will enable the commercial development of smart meters, the remote management of gas, water and electricity transmission and distribution networks, and also district heating and environmental management.
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Evolved NB-IoT ecosystem
TIM said that the network would help in contributing to the “development of a complete and evolved ecosystem, testing the chipsets and smart objects of the main players to guarantee the market full interoperability with its network and making the Open Lab in Turin available to all partners in the sector to integrate these devices and make Internet of Things objects smart”.
It added that its NB-IoT Open Lab, which opened last November, has to date has involved 110 companies with 39 active collaborations, of which 12 validation activities have already been completed.
TIM said that it would work alongside Olevetti to develop a portfolio of IoT products and services that will be able to “fully exploit the speed and low latency of the LTE/5G networks, such as industrial automation or interconnection between cars and infrastructure, to enable the evolution towards autonomous driving scenarios”.
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