Telstra has strengthened its IoT capabilities with the rollout of a narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) network in major cities and many regional towns across Australia.
According to the company, this comes in addition to around three million square kilometers of Cat-M1 IoT coverage that it switched on in 2017.
With the NB-IoT deployment, Telstra claims to be the only carrier in Australia and one of the first in the world to offer both NB-IoT and Cat-M1 IoT connectivity.
“We’ve embraced both Cat M1 and narrowband to give our customers, particularly our enterprise customers in industries like transportation and logistics, mining, manufacturing and agriculture, the opportunity to choose which technology best suits their needs,” Telstra COO Robyn Denholm said.
Denholm said NB-IoT technology will speed up IoT adoption in Australia by opening up the opportunity to connect millions of new devices sending small volumes of data at very low power levels over Telstra’s mobile network.
By contrast, Cat M1is well suited to applications with data in the 100s 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 claimed Telstra already connects over two million IoT devices in Australia today. The company’s Smart Home platform, meanwhile, supports lights, cameras and motion sensors.
“We expect the new mobile network capabilities we have deployed will drive rapid growth and over the next five years we forecast we will be connecting four times more devices than we do today,” Denholm noted.
The NB-IoT rollout has been delivered as part of Telstra’s “Networks for the Future” program, a key pillar in the up to A$3 billion ($2.3 billion) capital investment Telstra is making to improve the customer experience.
As part of its push around IoT, Telstra has also entered into a Smart City partnership with the Tasmanian State Government, the Federal Government, several local Councils and the University of Tasmania to develop and trial new IoT solutions and drive the uptake of IoT in Launceston.
Under the agreement an IoT lab will be established in Launceston and Telstra will support the creation of a Tasmanian Agritech Start-up Accelerator.