BARCELONA, Spain (Mobile World Congress) – In response to demand from an increasing number of companies looking for low cost, low power Internet of Things (IoT) devices to help optimize their businesses and deliver new services, Cisco today announced that Cisco Jasper® has completed live trials of NB-IoT on its Control Center connectivity management platform, making it one of the first IoT platforms to support NB-IoT.

NB-IoT (Narrow Band-IoT) is a 3GPP-standard for Low Power Wide Area Networking (LPWAN) that is expected to drive growth of IoT at a massive scale, increasing the number of connected devices in excess of 3 billion by 2023. Supported by the GSMA, NB-IoT delivers a reliable, cost-effective IoT connectivity solution for low-cost devices. This is achieved by leveraging existing LTE infrastructure to enable lower power consumption while maintaining excellent coverage. Examples of industries where NB-IoT is expected to transform business models include smart meters, smart cities, smart parking, building automation, asset tracking, and remote agriculture.

“IoT plays a critical role in helping companies embrace innovative new service-oriented business models, and with the addition of NB-IoT support, we are helping enterprises and service providers accelerate the delivery of more value-centric solutions to market,” said Macario Namie, Head of IoT Strategy at Cisco® Jasper. “With NB-IoT, an entire new segment of devices can now be connected in a cost-effective way, driving benefits for companies and their customers at mass scale.”

Companies looking to deliver NB-IoT services via connected devices are increasingly seeing value in the ability to manage massive-scale device deployments in mixed connectivity environments. By building out support for NB-IoT, Cisco Jasper and its service provider partners are also making it easy for enterprises to manage devices across multiple network types.

Global Demand – and Operator Support – for NB-IoT

Cisco Jasper is seeing increasing support for NB-IoT throughout its global service provider partnerships and demand from enterprises worldwide. The company has already completed live trials, including initial core network trials with Optus in Australia, which has completed integration of the Cisco Jasper platform to support NB-IoT.

“Optus sees the evolution of LTE technology, to support dedicated IoT networks, as a critical step towards mass adoption of IoT solutions by both enterprise and consumers, and is excited to be part of this emerging market trend,” said Allan Burdekin, Head of NCSi Incorporating Safe and Smart Cities at Optus. “Incorporating Cisco Jasper into our NB-IoT plans allows us to provide a consistent user experience to our customers across both traditional cellular and NB-IoT, all on a single platform. Cisco Jasper will be a key partner in enabling our customers to grow and scale with the IoT market in the most efficient way”.

Globally, Cisco Jasper partners with more than 50 service providers, managing IoT devices across more than 550 mobile operator networks. Many of these service providers have already committed to NB-IoT.

“I am convinced that LPWAN will have a huge impact on the IoT market, and for businesses in general. It opens up new use cases otherwise not possible, and can enable true mass-market implementations that, in many ways, will make the world smarter,” said Rami Avidan, Managing Director, Tele2 IoT AB. “We are committed to taking a leading role in driving this development alongside Cisco Jasper. Their support for NB-IoT will make it simple for our customers to manage their deployments and help accelerate global adoption.”

“Etisalat was the first operator in MENA to successfully conduct trials using NB-IoT in UAE and be ready for large-scale, reliable and secure connectivity for Internet of Things (IoT) solutions,” said Francisco Salcedo, Senior Vice President at Etisalat Digital. “We believe that NB-IoT is a key network technology for a new generation of connected sensors and devices. This technology will help in bringing more efficiency and scalability to a wide range of services, such as Smart Parking and Smart Metering.”