MTN and Huawei Launched the
first NB-IoT solution in Africa
MTN
and Huawei jointly launched the Smart Water Metering solution, the first
Narrowband Internet of Things (NB IoT) solution in Africa. The solution is
designed to help MTN develop their NB IoT services to explore new markets.
The
Smart Water metering solution enables the automated collection of utility meter
data, while manual meter reading leads to high labor costs and missing or
inaccurate data. Through sensors installed in water meters, customers can
identify water pipeline leakage earlier. Household water meters will
automatically report data on a regular basis, reducing fault probabilities and
the operating expense. Powered by the NB-IoT technology by Huawei, the sensor
array is designed to serve as a diagnostic spine that underpins network
management. The data gathered can be used to control waste water flows from
each property, identify faults across the network and improve health and safety
outcomes.
Babak
Fouladi, Group Chief Technology and Information Officer, Interim SA CTO of MTN,
commented: "NB-IoT is viewed by the industry as the answer for enterprise
applications in a range of different areas, from utility meters to sensor
monitoring to asset-tracking. In line with our strategy to explore new
enterprise markets, MTN is glad to lead the application of this new technology
in Africa. Now we've succeeded in the commercial trial of smart water metering,
the first NB-IoT service in Africa, and looking forward, wildlife tracking,
smart farm, and smart parking etc., lots of services will be available to bring
us a better connected Africa."
NB-IoT
is a new technology that will extend the utilization of IoT by making it more
efficient to connect objects requiring a long battery life and are located in
hard to reach areas to the Internet by ways of mobile connectivity. This Low
Power Wide Area technology will connect more objects to the Internet of Things.
The strong growth in the NB-IoT market has motivated many analyst firms to
create forecasts showing the expected numbers of connections as well as the revenue
potential. Generally, the global IoT market is expected to be worth trillions
of dollars by 2020, and there will be a very promising market with 450 million
cellular IoT connections needed in Africa.
The
Smart Water Metering service from MTN will be commercially deployed in 2017.
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