Chinese mobile operators are leading the way in terms of IoT deployments as they have already connected nearly 960 million devices, according to a recent study by GSMA Intelligence.
According to the report, announced last week during Mobile World Congress 2019 Shanghai, these IoT connections are enabling mass market deployments of smart home, smart industry and smart city solutions.
According to GSMA Intelligence, China is the world’s largest IoT market, with 64% of the 1.5 billion global cellular connections, including mobile IoT licensed LPWA technologies.
“Backed by proactive government support, China is now at the forefront in the development and mass deployment of innovative and transformative IoT based solutions based on Mobile IoT technology,” said Alex Sinclair, GSMA CTO.
“These new technologies are being implemented across multiple different vertical sectors fundamentally altering the way we live and work, delivering real-time information and making our cities smarter and our lives easier and more productive,” Sinclair said.
The GSMA study highlighted a specific deployment in which Chinese firm Sunsea AIoT, together with China Telecom, has installed over 500,000 NB-IoT sensors covering over 37 kilometers in the Jing’an District, turning the area into a smart community. The devices monitor fire hydrant water pressure sensors as well as gas and smoke detectors and environmental monitors. Connected manhole covers also monitor gases and underground assets. An integrated platform centralizes, monitors and analyzes the data to help with real-time improvements.
Also, China Mobile has installed over 100,000 NB-IoT intelligent fire alarm systems including fire alarms, temperature sensors, smoke and gas detectors across China, while China Unicom has installed over 25,000 gas and water meters utilising an NB-IoT solution that combines the IoT with big data.
The NB-IoT electric bike management system jointly developed by Zhengzhou Public Security Bureau, China Mobile, Huawei and Tendency has won the GSMA Award for ‘Best Mobile Innovation for Smart Cities in Asia’ at Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2019.
China is the world’s largest producer and seller of electric bikes. Electric bikes have become an important means of transportation for consumers in China, which has brought great convenience to the daily life of the people. However, electric bikes create urban management, security and safety problems, which are worsening with the widening adoption. According to statistics, 70% of reported theft, 30% of traffic accidents and 9% of fires were caused by electric bikes in Zhengzhou in 2017.
To address these problems, Zhengzhou Public Security Bureau has been working with China Mobile, Huawei and Tendency for an innovative management system, which is based on NB-IoT E2E solution. Multiple functions can be enabled by equipping existing electric bikes with NB-IoT communications devices and GPS or BeiDou modules, which include: anti-theft tracking, fire warning, power alarms and traffic violation prevention.
The NB-IoT electric bike management system is widely deployed in Zhengzhou, in China’s Henan Province, with about 3 million electric bikes connected to the NB-IoT network, with theft and fire protection.
