Telstra rolls out Narrowband support
- 12 January, 2018 10:58
Telstra has rolled out support for the NarrowBand IoT standard across major Australian cities and a number of regional towns.
In August last year Telstra revealed it had switched on Cat M1 support across its 4G network. Telstra said today that it is currently the only Australian carrier to support both Cat M1 and NB-IoT.
“We already offer our customers Australia’s largest and fastest mobile network and with our IoT Network now we have added the ability to support millions of new devices like sensors, trackers and alarms operating at very low data rates that can sit inside machines and vehicles, reach deep inside buildings and have a battery life of years rather than hours and days,” Telstra chief operations officer, Robyn Denholm, said in a statement.
“These devices will be the centrepiece of the Internet of Things, which involves enabling everyday objects to send and receive data and will transform the way we all live and work in the years ahead.”
The Telstra COO said that offering both Cat M1 and Narrowband support gave its enterprise customers “the opportunity to choose which technology best suits their needs.”
“Cat M1 is well suited to applications with data in the hundreds of kilobits per second with extended range and long battery life, such as a personal health monitor or a device used to measure vehicle performance,” she said.
“Narrowband is better suited to applications sending even smaller amounts of data and operating with an even longer battery life, such as a moisture sensor or livestock tracking device.”
Enabling support for NB-IoT is part of Telstra’s ‘networks of the future’ investment program, announced by in 2016 and further detailed in early 2017 by CEO Andy Penn.
Penn said that the company would increase its planned capital expenditure by $3 billion over three years, investing in networks, the digitisation of Telstra, and boosting customer experience.
Vodafone in October 2017 revealed it had begun the progressive rollout of NB-IoT support, beginning in Sydney and Melbourne.