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MediaTek and ZTE have announced the industry’s first certification of NB-IoT R14 for commercial applications. By this announcement, the two companies actually suggest that the NB-IoT R14 specification is ready for the large-scale commercial deployment phase. These two companies have been testing the NB-IoT R14 for a while now, the two companies have performed a number of high-speed tests of the NB-IoT R14 Cat-NB2 specification with uplink / downlink data speeds of over 150 / 100kbps.
The two companies noted that the NB-IoT R14 Cat-NB2 is a perfect fit for Firmware Over-The-Air (FOTA), Voice over Message, and other applications which need high-data transmission rates with minimal delay. The NB-IoT R14 Cat-NB2 is a considerable improvement over the R13 CAT-NB2, as it offers considerably higher speeds, 150 / 100kbps compared to 60 / 21kbps of R13 CAT-NB2. The NB-IoT R14 Cat-NB2 offers higher speeds by using larger transport blocks (2536 bits TBS), and the 2HARQ process, says MediaTek. The company also notes that the NB-IoT R14 has also been enhanced in terms of mobility, positioning, multicasting, and multi-carrier technology. Thanks to all that, it should provide better standards and technical support for the development of IoT products. MediaTek’s Corporate Vice President and General Manager of the Home Entertainment Business Group, Jerry Yu, thinks that the NB-IoT technology is the key for the IOT era.
The company’s Corporate VP also stated that the NB-IoT will enter the commercial phase in 2018, and it seems like Mr. Yu hopes that this tech will push the industry forward. Two of the company’s chips support the NB-IoT R14 specification at the moment, the single-mode MT2625 and the GSM+NB-IoT dual-mode MT2621. MediaTek also stated that it plans to introduce new wearable gadgets which will be equipped with those two processors during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018. That being said, the company actually announced the Helio P60 SoC today as well, while MediaTek and China Mobile announced their new 5G-related cooperation as well. The two companies will collaborate in order to develop 5G terminals for pre-commercial launch, which is set to take place in 2019, while the commercial rollout is targeted for 2020. If you’d like to read more about it, click here.