Abundant IoT, Advisors Tackle the eIoT Opportunity

The fifth generation of wireless communications technology – 5G – will be the backbone of IoT. 5G is all about faster speeds and low-latency networks. What does this mean for businesses? According to AT&T, it’s about speed, low latency and more — it’s the ability to support the connection of many more devices, and an increase in energy efficiency of the network elements. When talking about IoT, talking about 5G alone doesn’t go far enough — you also have to talk about low-power, narrow-band networks, also referred to as (LPWAN). This year a number of carriers announced they’ll be launching their own LPWANs. In June, AT&T, for example, said that next year it will launch NarrowBand Internet of Things (NB-IoT) to meet the growing needs of business customers for a wide range of IoT solutions. NB-IoT technology complements the carrier’s existing LTE-M network in the U.S. and Mexico. AT&T’s investment in NB-IoT and LTE-M will be future-ready and is expected to become part of the industry’s massive IoT standards. Verizon also announced plans for a NB-IoT network while T-Mobile this year launched its US NB-IoT network. There are at least one-dozen carriers worldwide that also have NB-IoT on their agenda. “There’s a part of this transformation [from currently LTE to future 5G] that’s not just about speed, but having these low power wide-area networks that are slower in speed,” said Mobeen Khan, AVP, IoT products, marketing and management, AT&T. “It’s because of the way they’re built, which allows devices that connect to the network to be able to last a long time on the battery charge, be able to communicate in harsher settings, be able to have a smaller device footprint, and be able to be lower cost than LTE devices.” This opens the potential for a slew of use cases.Shutterstock