China Mobile will start the construction of a mobile internet of things (IoT) in 346 cities across the country in the second half, indicated Shang Bing, chairman of China Mobile, on June 29. China Telecom has established an NB-IoT commercial network covering the whole Wuxi and will develop in more cities in the future. China United Network has initiated technology tests in many cities and relevant construction will initiate before the end of the year.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) released a circular on fully advancing the construction and development of mobile Internet of Things on June 15, requiring speeding up in the development of the Internet of Things and establish infrastructure for the NB-IoT. It will achieve the coverage of the NB-IoT network in municipalities and provincial capitals with 400,000 base stations by the end of 2017. It will achieve the coverage of the NB-IoT network in the whole country with 1.5 million base stations by 2020.
China Telecom indicated that the mobile IoT with NB-IoT technologies is characterized by a strong penetration, wide coverage, low energy consumption and low cost. Take the mobile IoT of China Telecom in Wuxi as an example, it can cover elevators and underground garages with low energy consumption. An AA battery can support the equipment for years. Besides, the cost of chips to the NB-IoT-based IoT is lower than those with 3G or 4G technologies.
Industry insiders view that as the three operators make deployment in mobile IoT, the whole industry will witness rapid development and size of relevant industries will also expand resulting from continuous improvement in network facility accordingly. Investment in mobile IoT network covering the whole Wuxi city amounts to about 200 million yuan and 2,000 NB-IoT base stations will be built, said Zhang Hualin, general manager with China Telecom, Wuxi branch. Based on the estimation made by industry insiders that the cost of building one NB-IoT base station is about 1 million yuan, investment of operators will total as much as 150 billion yuan if establishing 1.5 million base stations by 2020.
Mobile IoT has been applied in many fields such as manufacturing, retailing, service and public utility industries, and will drive fast development of other relevant industries. “NB-IoT technology has pushed up the network ratio of 6 million units of washing machines of Little Swan from 15 percent under 2G and 3G network to over 90 percent, which greatly improves the utilization ratio of built-in network module of these machines and releases more value of products,” said Xu Pengcheng, deputy general manager of Wuxi Little Swan Company Limited.
Qian Xiaoming, general manager with Wuxi Waterworks Co., Ltd., remarked that “NB-IoT technology plays an important role in saving construction cost of the traditional wired water meter, save manpower and prevent water leakage. Recently, our company places such water meters in about 600 households in Hongshan IoT town.”
Wu Jianping, deputy head with Economy, Trade and Information Commission of Wuxi Municipality, introduced that by the end of 2016, 1,267 enterprises were included in Wuxi IoT industry and their operating revenues reached 204.5 billion yuan, up by 5.1 times and 9.3 times when compared with those in 2009.
Translated by Star Zhang
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