AT&T has stopped promoting NB-IoT information plans and certifying NB-IoT units, because it begins the method to decommission its NB-IoT community within the US solely. The choice was taken as a part of a method for “enhancing” its IoT companies for enterprise prospects, whose IoT units will likely be moved to “various community applied sciences equivalent to LTE-M”. It stated the planning course of to part out its NB-IoT community within the US is underway. The mission will likely be accomplished as early as the primary quarter of subsequent 12 months (2025), it stated.
A spokesperson commented: “We’re enhancing our IoT companies for enterprise prospects by shifting from NB IoT to the LTE-M community. This transformation will present extra information capability for each mounted and cellular units. Consequently, we’ve stopped the certification of latest NB-IoT units and the sale of information plans using the NB-IoT community. We’re working carefully with prospects to make this course of as seamless as potential.”
AT&T opened its NB-IoT community in 2019, geared for lower-power (LPWA) mobile IoT companies. At CES at first of the 12 months, it informed RCR Wi-fi its precedence targets within the IoT market are ‘linked property, linked healthcare, linked infrastructure, and linked areas’. The final of those, described because the “broadest class,” covers mobile in manufacturing, retail, and different enterprise environments, it stated – the place non-public 5G has discovered its mark.
But it surely has been quiet about non-public 5G, in addition to about utilizing shared CBRS within the US – though it’s working with Celona on a impartial host provide. (Celona’s product is out there with AT&T and T-Cell.) However AT&T’s conventional M2M focus has been on the automotive business, which has tended to require greater mobility and throughput than afforded by NB-IoT. It has additionally simply agreed a deal to purchase $1 billion of 700 MHz and three.45 GHz spectrum from UScellular.
Most likely together with Vodafone within the UK, AT&T is the main provider of mobile IoT to the automotive sector. At CES, 10 months in the past, it stated it was within the strategy of “constructing…the (standalone) 5G (SA) capabilities that can launch in vehicles within the 2025 timeframe”, and that it could work with automotive OEMs via 2024 on ‘issues like on-demand high quality of service, bandwidth calendaring, and different capabilities that facilitate… software-defined autos’.
The agency additionally talked to RCR Wi-fi on the occasion about “simplifying [its] mobile IoT options” and the way the mobile business, usually, has not recorded as many IoT “successes as individuals would really like” – but additionally that it’s “bucking the development”. It has been testing reduced-capability 5G (RedCap) as a 5G-based successor for 4G/LTE-based mobile IoT applied sciences, together with NB-IoT and LTE-M, since final 12 months.
In August final 12 months, it stated it was the primary US service to run a RedCap information connection on its 5G SA community, each within the lab and within the area. In September, the GSMA recognized AT&T as considered one of a handful of operators exterior of China to be actively investing in RedCap via trials and deployments. On a RedCap webinar session in November, GSMA Intelligence stated a complete of 31 operators in 22 markets had “both commercially deployed or introduced plans [to deploy], or are presently testing, RedCap know-how”.
AT&T had about 117 million linked units on its community as of the second quarter of this 12 months.
