Sprint has announced the availability of narrowband IoT on its Curiosity IoT platform, as a complement to the nationwide Cat-M rollout.
The company said that NB-IoT technology further expands low-power wide area network access to its dedicated, virtualized and distributed network and operating system.
“Whether its sensors are in a large fleet of cargo trucks or connectivity across an industrial automation operation, the combination of Cat-M and NB-IoT brings flexibility to address the unique demands of diverse connected device use cases,” said Ivo Rook, senior vice president of IoT and product development. “The design of Curiosity IoT has always been based on being connectivity-agnostic. Low-power wide area network expansion is a reflection of this need, and we are proud to launch NB-IoT to support ABB as they connect their industry leading solutions.”
At the MWC Los Angeles event this week, Sprint and Ericsson will demonstrate a live network connected asset, as it might be used in a rural field environment. The asset will be connected via NB-IoT, powered by Ericsson’s IoT Accelerator platform.
“With NB-IoT, Sprint now expands low-power wide area network access to Curiosity IoT,” said Åsa Tamsons, senior vice president and head of business area technologies and new businesses at Ericsson. “With this complement, Sprint is meeting the needs of SMBs, enterprises and government entities alike in how to connect, manage and secure its people, places and things.”
“We are pleased to be working with Sprint on forward-thinking applications that aim to bring game-changing solutions to ABB customers,” said Juha Mirsch, global cellular communication lead for ABB. “We are working together to help drive safety, reliability and energy efficiency through IoT solutions.”
Sprint also announced the launch of a private network solution for the IoT segment.
The solution design enables enterprise customers to manage IoT applications that have critical requirements, such as low latency or local breakout, without the need to traverse the macro network, Sprint said.
“Curiosity IoT was created with the possibility of private networking in mind,” Rook said. The dedicated, distributed and virtualized core network and operating system allows for the flexibility across all types of customers, including those who have very demanding network needs or operate in hard-to-reach areas.”
The solution, developed through a collaboration with Ericsson, will provide a virtual, pre-integrated core network that is quick to deploy and access agnostic. Each enterprise location can be configured based on the specific needs of the enterprise.
Sprint highlighted that possible use cases for this new solution include connected factory, predictive maintenance, remote monitoring and inspection, support for harsh environment sensors and assembly line configuration flexibility.
Curiosity IoT is a dedicated, virtualized and distributed IoT network and operating system built by Sprint to handle data from a variety of IoT use cases and devices.
When coupled with Sprint’s 5G service, Curiosity’s IoT core network will be capable of supporting artificial intelligence, robotics, edge computing, autonomous vehicles and other IoT systems requiring extreme low-latency and high-bandwidth, the carrier previously said.
