Vodafone’s IoT network coverage of the Czech Republic completed
Vodafone is the first operator in the Czech Republic and one of the first in the world to complete a nation-wide NB-IoT network coverage. The narrow-band Internet of things technology has now been added to all existing Vodafone LTE transmitters. This provides population coverage of nearly 100% in exteriors and more than 94% coverage in the interior of buildings in the country.
Vodafone is now able to guarantee the highest quality of IoT connection in the Czech Republic due to the technology’s strong penetration into buildings and operation at a safe licensed frequency. NB-IoT’s other advantages include its low energy requirements, low prices of end devices and s great scalability potential.
“Our customers can access the most modern and fastest network in the Czech Republic, now with the addition of a nation-wide IoT network of the highest quality. Many businesses thus get a major competitive advantage and a chance to seize new opportunities,” says Jiří Švarc, Vodafone’s network development director, adding: “Some of our customers have ben testing the technology for several months already and more will be able to join them in December when we want to launch NB-IoT commercially.”
NB-IoT is an interesting technology for companies developing modern systems including remote-control water, gas and electricity meters, automated lighting, security systems, remote treatment, parking systems and various types of sensors, monitoring and alarm devices.
“The 3GPP standard greatly helped with the integration of NB-IoT into the Vodafone network as is ensures a high level of compatibility, security and synergy with other mobile technologies and allows the installation of NB-IoT practically at any LTE base station,” Jiří Švarc explains and continues: “We have, therefore, been able to cover the entire Czech Republic very efficiently and in a relative short time, creating a ten times denser NB-IoT network than currently offered by other Internet of Things networks.”
NB-IoT was integrated into existing LTE transmitters by a software update of Single RAN, a cutting-edge radio access network technology. In addition to 2G, 3G and 4G/LTE, Vodafone’s transmitters now also provide NB-IoT. Vodafone prepared the underlying technical solution in partnership with Huawei.
In terms of security, NB-IoT is one the most secure LPWA technologies. It uses a licensed frequency and thanks to the 3GPP standard it also adopts standard LTE security mechanisms.
NB-IoT is connected to Vodafone’s global IoT platform, which consists of sophisticated connectivity management software integrated into the backbone network and a global Vodafone SIM card. Its other advantages include a web portal that provides the customer with service data as well as technical data about his SIM cards. Furthermore, the customer has access to and can control the SIM cards through an app interface in his own corporate system.