By Joseph Waring

Huawei sees rapid migration to NB-IoT networks

With the number of IoT use cases soaring, Huawei has seen shipments of its IoT chipsets increase from 2 million units in 2017 to 15 million last year, and the Chinese vendor expects the number to jump to 100 million at the end of this year.

Veni Shone, president of Huawei’s device chipset business, a keynote speaker at the Mobile IoT Summit, noted many operators around the world are shutting down 2G networks, with 2G and 3G M2M services quickly evolving to mobile IoT networks based on LTE.

In China, Huawei predicts by the end of 2020 more than half of IoT connections running on 2G and 3G networks will shift to LTE NB-IoT and in five years the majority will be based on the technology.

The company is working with partners on more than 50 types of use cases, he added.

The Chinese city of Yingtan, for example, is saving 2 million tonnes of water a year after deploying 2 million smart water meters, which resulted in reducing the leakage rate from 20 per cent to 10 per cent.

More than 500 cites in China are using the company’s NB-IoT network gear in smart city deployments.