The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially issued a document requesting the acceleration of the development and landing of NB-IoT. Specifically, in terms of NB-IoT network construction, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology requires that the NB-IoT base station of China's NB-IoT network should reach 1.5 million by 2020; by the end of 2017, the NB-IoT base station of China's NB-IoT network. The scale will reach 400,000. In addition, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also requires that by 2020, the total number of NB-IoT connections in China will exceed 600 million; at the end of 2017, the total number of NB-IoT connections in China will exceed 20 million.
As an emerging technology of LPWAN (Low Power WAN), NB-IoT is favored by operators because of its advantages of low power consumption, low cost, wide coverage, and massive nodes, and it can seamlessly connect with 2G and 3G in licensed bands. And accept. Especially in 2017, according to statistics, more than 50 operators around the world are deploying NB-IoT. Huawei, Qualcomm, and Zhongxingwei are also actively promoting the NB-IoT chip, network, and deployment industry chain. work hard.
Well, this is a great news for the entire NB-IoT industry chain. Has the spring of NB-IoT arrived?
It is reported that in 2017, the global NB-IoT market value is expected to reach 321 million US dollars, 2022 will reach 8.221 billion US dollars, with an average compound annual growth rate of 91.3%.
But after all, the NB-IoT industry is just getting started, and development is still at a supply-driven stage. Although the chip manufacturers said that they will actively follow up and lay out IOT, there are not many chip manufacturers who are actually doing practical things. This also causes the cost of NB-IOT chips and modules to fail to meet expectations. Some studies have shown that the cost should be reduced to 1 US dollar for large-scale applications, and the single connection module should be about 5 US dollars. It is difficult to be "flat" with this expectation in a short period of time.
After the official publication of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the deployment of the NB-IOT network of the three major operators in China is bound to attract more attention from the industry. Judging from the current information, Unicom will deploy NB-IoT in the 900MHz+1800MHz frequency band, with 900M in rural areas. Unicom is also very active in NB-IOT. In 2016, it has completed the construction of 800 base stations in Shanghai, covering the outer ring basically, and plans to complete the construction of 2,600 base stations in 2017. However, because China Unicom still has a 1800MHz frequency band, it may be relatively slow in network deployment.
For mobile, the industry is still speculating that mobile will choose to commercial NB-IOT or eMTC first. However, after the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a document, Mobile will definitely prioritize the deployment of the NB-IOT network. However, at this seminar, the head of the product line of Lierda said that the existing GPRS network may have some conflicts with the NB-IOT network deployed next, and the mobile has no license for FDD, so There are some obstacles in deploying the NB-IOT network. It is expected that mobile will achieve full-scale commercial use in 2018.
Compared with China Unicom and China Mobile, Telecom is the most aggressive operator on NB-IoT. In the speech, the guest of China Telecom Shenzhen pointed out that in the face of the trillion-level market opportunity of the IoT industry, China Telecom will evolve from the ordinary operation of providing “pipeline†to the integrated service of the Internet of Things. NB-IoT will be China Telecom's technology choice and specific opportunities in the LPWA IoT market. It is reported that Telecom will complete the first phase of the national NB-IoT network at the end of June, and determine specific information such as tariffs and business cooperation programs. In addition, telecommunications has also determined the network architecture of NB-IoT: the industry terminal connects to the base station through the NB-IoT module, and then transmits the data to the client's application server through the core network.
Some analysts pointed out that China Telecom's 2G is a traditional CDMA network, and the network cost is relatively high. In the past two years, it has also frequently reported that telecommunications want to abandon CDMA. Although 2G retreat is the trend of the times, before the appropriate alternatives, CDMA 2G networks are like "chicken ribs", and it is a pity to eat them. The emergence of NB-IOT can be described as the "savior" of telecommunications. Telecom can directly deploy NB-IOT network in the frequency band of CDMA 800M, and it is expected to achieve overtaking in corners. Therefore, it is not surprising that telecommunications is so "radical" NB-IoT strategy.
The NB-IoT strategies of the three major operators are all progressing in an orderly manner, but they still face challenges in network deployment and optimization. According to Vodafone's estimation, the deployment of NB-IoT by enterprise base stations only requires software upgrade, but for network operators with stale base stations, hardware upgrades are required, which will lead to increased cost and time consumption of NB-IoT network construction. . According to the operator's plan, the second half of 2017 and 2018 are the time for the network to be deployed on a large scale. After that, it still takes one year to optimize the network and demonstrate the application.
NB-IoT chip manufacturer1. Huawei: On May 15th, Huawei said that the NB-IOT chip (Boudica series), which was manufactured by TSMC, will be shipped in large quantities in June. ublox and Vision will provide NB-IoT commercial modules. Boudica 120 plans to ship more than a million pieces per month, and the Boudica150 chip is expected to be shipped in large quantities in 2017Q4. At present, Huawei has cooperated with more than 40 partners and more than 20 industrial formats. By the end of 2017, it will support 30 NB-IOT commercial networks worldwide, accelerate the promotion of NB-IoT technology in smart meters and shared bicycles. Large-scale commercial use in smart homes, water pollution monitoring, and car networking.
2. Qualcomm: In Qualcomm's view, the Internet of Things multimode is a trend, and the two technologies NB-IoT and eMTC will complement each other. If the global NB-IoT+eMTC dual mode is adopted, the advantages of the two technologies will be fully utilized to make up for the shortcomings of both parties.
To this end, Qualcomm has introduced a multimode IoT chip MDM9206 that can support eMTC/NB-IoT/GSM. The chip enables multi-mode support for eMTC/NB-IoT/GSM with a single hardware, allowing users to dynamically select connections via software. At the same time, the integrated RF can support 15 LTE bands, which can cover most of the world. The advantage is that it solves the diverse deployment requirements of global operators and end users through a single SKU, and is cost-effective, fast-to-commercial, and can be upgraded through OTA.
3. RDA: RDA NB-IoT chip RDA8909 supports 2G and NB-IoT dual mode. RDA8909 complies with 3GPP R13 NB-IoT standard. It can also support the latest 3GPP R14 standard through software upgrade. Another three-mode product, the RDA8910, which supports eMTC, NB-IoT and GPRS, is also in preparation and is expected to be mass-produced in 2018Q2.
4. ZTE Microelectronics: The chip of ZTE Microelectronics NB-IoT is Wisefone7100. It is said that the Wisefone 7100 integrates the CK802 chip of Zhongtian Microsystem. It is expected that the Q2 will be listed in 2017 and there is no further information.
5, Intel: The chip model is XMM 7115, which supports the NB-IoT standard. Samples are expected to be available in the second half of 2016. The XMM 7315 supports both LTE Category M and NB-IoT standards, and integrates an LTE modem and an IA application processor on a single chip. It is expected to be commercialized in 2017.
6, Nordic: nRF91 series is Nordic's NB-IoT cellular technology products. Samples are expected to be available in the second half of 2017 and will be available in 2018.
Some analysts pointed out that when the NB-IoT chip is $1 and the module is trending to $5, the commercial threshold can be further reduced, and it is obviously not up to the requirements. The cost of the NB-IoT module will drop to around $5 in the second quarter of 2018, and it will be interesting to see that NB-IoT will be further commercialized.
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