• Six months on from the creation of the NB-IoT Prototyping Hub
• 16 NB-IoT solutions being demonstrated in Bonn this week
• 10 customer trials to be completed by the middle of this year
• Deutsche Telekom will commercially launch NB-IoT in Q2 of 2017

​​​​​Deutsche Telekom has given an update on its European Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) activities, specifically on its NB-IoT Prototyping Hub. The Hub is a program designed to accelerate market adoption by bringing existing and potential customers together with specialised NB-IoT developers and start-ups. These start-ups can use the telco’s live NB-IoT trial base stations to test new applications and sensors in its labs in Bonn and Berlin in Germany, as well as Krakow in Poland.

Since the Hub was established in mid-2016, Deutsche Telekom says progress has been “astounding”, with more than 100 developers creating solutions across multiple industries, including the utilities sector, smart lighting, smart parking, industrial solutions, tracking, smart waste management and smart building applications.

“NarrowBand IoT is an incredibly important technology for us on the road to 5G and we are therefore highly active in pushing its ecosystem,” said Tomasz Gerszberg, SVP Business Operations, Deutsche Telekom. “Deutsche Telekom’s NB-IoT Prototyping Hub was and is a tremendously successful tool to achieve this push. We have in just six months enabled 16 live NB-IoT use cases, after the initial NB-IoT parking solution we introduced last October in Bonn.”

These final 16 solutions are being demonstrated in Bonn this week during a summit organised by the telco, running on Deutsche Telekom’s live NB-IoT network. They include Ayyeka, a smart water management solution developed in Israel; Bee & Me, a smart agriculture application from Montenegro; and Flashnet, a Romanian company which enables smart lighting. The telco now intends to commercialise these solutions across European markets.

“The next steps are to get the most promising and needed NB-IoT solutions out into the real world so they can benefit our customers and their clients, be that specific business sectors or the public at large,” said Gerszberg. “We aim to have at least 10 customer trials completed by the middle of this year.”

Deutsche Telekom recently announced the roll out of NB-IoT in eight of its markets, including in Germany, where Deutsche Telekom will commercially launch NB-IoT in the second quarter of 2017. In the Netherlands, the nationwide implementation of the NB-IoT network is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2017 and in its other European markets, including Austria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, there are plans to extend the already existing NB-IoT coverage to more cities.