China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile operator in terms of subscribers, plans to deploy 118,000 NB-IoT base stations across the country during 2020, taking the total to 350,000, Chinese news site C114.net reported. China Mobile stopped adding new IoT connections to its 2G network as the telco accelerates the deployment of NB-IoT infrastructure across the country,…
Finland has issued its first private cellular licence for industrial LTE and 5G at 2.3 GHz. State-owned energy company Fortum Power and Heat will use the licence at its power plant in Loviisa, on the country’s southern coast. Local transport and communications agency Traficom has promised more licences will follow, and urged the industrial sector…
AT&T and Accenture have teamed up on private cellular for US oil company Phillips 66. The trio are developing a bespoke industrial LTE and 5G setup for low-latency refinery automation and analytics, they said. The solution utilises AT&T’s public network and edge compute infrastructure. The story goes that Phillips 66 invited Accenture to address “cellular…
Danish pump manufacturer Grundfos is to replace wired connections with a private 5G network from Swedish vendor Ericsson and local operator TDC NET at its production plant in Bjerringbro, north of Aarhus, in Denmark. The project is a trial-run, with a view to a broader 5G-enabled Industry 4.0 deployment across its factories. Grundfos wants to…
South Korea’s telecommunications operators have launched new smart factory solutions with the aim of helping manufacturers overcome the economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Korean news service Yonhap reported. SK Telecom, the country’s largest mobile operator, released a subscription-based smart factory solution for small and medium-sized manufacturers that optimizes their equipment maintenance. The…
Autonomous NB-IoT platform harvests its own energy HiSilicon, a chip manufacturer owned by Chinese vendor Huawei, and Dutch firm Nowi Energy showcased the second generation of their energy autonomous NB-IoT platform. The companies explained that the device acts as a sensor hub which can transmit via NB-IoT while operating indefinitely through its energy harvesting capabilities.…
Real-time Bluetooth-based sports analytics is coming to football (soccer), says Finnish duo Wisehockey and Quuppa after putting their real-time locating system (RTLS) to the test in their home country. Player and ball movements were tracked during a pre-season match between top-tier Finnish teams earlier this month, and testing of the system was carried out last…
US electronics distributor Avnet is selling IoT modules ready-bundled with cellular IoT connectivity following a deal with international carrier services company BICS. Avnet’s semiconductor division, Avnet Silica, is offering IoT modules with embedded 2G, 3G, 4G, NB-IoT, and LTE-M connectivity via BICS’ global embedded-SIM (eSIM) solution, called SIM for Things. It is targeting developers and device…
Sometimes IoT technologies work better in concert. The standard model for IoT networks to combine two or more different connectivity technologies is when short-range wireless protocols are used in the sensors themselves. Often, these short-range sensors utilise IEEE 802.15.4 based protocols such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and Zigbee, which provide highly granular positioning data,…
US carrier Verizon has joined with UK digital accelerator Digital Catapult to develop 5G solutions for retail. The pair will make use of Verizon’s new 5G Lab in London, opened in February, to offer startups a production house to test their 5G based innovations. Companies will be able to use Verizon’s 5G and edge computing…
