October 7 (SeeNews) - Countries in Southeast Europe (SEE) have a very high rate of renewal in infrastructure such as roads, railways and buildings, which will benefit from the Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) technology and hopefully drive its implementation, the managing director of Telekom Austria Group M2M, a provider of machine-to-machine solutions, said.
NB-IoT is a narrowband radio technology specially designed for the Internet of Things (IoT) - a system of interrelated devices, vehicles, buildings and other items, embedded with electronics, software, and sensors, and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data. NB-IoT has a focus on indoor coverage, low cost, long battery life and capacity to connect a big number of devices. It can be deployed in GSM and LTE spectrum.
"NB-IoT will push the technical limits with regards to indoor coverage and battery lifetimes and it will change many business case constraints with much lower module costs," Phat Huynh told SeeNews in an emailed interview following the Telematics Conference SEEurope, which took place last week in the Hungarian capital Budapest. "This will particularly serve usecases with a large number of sensors that need to be widely spread such as smart cities."
Usecase is a software and system engineering term that describes how a user uses a system to accomplish a particular goal.
For many network operators NB-IoT can be enabled via software update in the network allowing for an almost instant roll-out compared to previous network upgrades, Huynh noted.
In SEE, however, the IoT has not seen as much traction as in other parts of the world and a number of local very innovative solution providers are focusing their efforts outside of their home countries. According to Huynh, one reason for this is the financial crisis which hit the region harder than Austria for example.
"But at the end of the day there are two reasons for businesses to adopt new technologies: either commercial benefits outweigh costs or it is legally mandatory," Huynh said. In the field of fiscalization, road tolling, eCall or smart metering it is clear that the demand arises from legislation. In other areas of application, complementary IT ecosystems are lacking the capability to fully leverage the potential of IoT, he added.
Frequently, potential customers do not have proper ERP systems or data analytics platforms and know-how in place to make full use of IoT, he added.
According to IDC data, the entire IoT market in SEE will reach $3.18 billion (2.85 billion euro) by 2020.
An area, in which Telekom Austria Group M2M sees opportunities for development in the region, is smart metering. Earlier this year, the company successfully finalised the first smart meter rollout within an entire supply area in Austria.
Smart metering provides many operational advantages that justify a roll-out even with regulatory pressure, according to Huynh.
"Starting from automated reading over reduction of non-technical losses to the enablement of new tariff models, the use of real-time metering opens up many possibilities. Especially in areas with a difficult socio-economic environment the deployment of pre-paid electricity tariffs is often discussed," he commented, adding that the same applies to gas and water metering.
Under the EU's 2009 Third Energy Package, member states are required to deploy smart meters wherever it is cost-effective to do so, with the goal to replace 80% of electricity meters in households and commercial buildings with smart meters by 2020. In SEE, however, following a pick-up of activity five years ago, progress has stalled.
The region comprises EU member states Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Slovenia, as well as other countries which are at various stages of their EU accession process.
Telekom Austria Group M2M, a unit of Telekom Austria, was founded in 2011 with headquarters in Vienna. In SEE, Telekom Austria is present in Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia.
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