Witnessed by experts from the global telecommunications industry and the media, Huawei's NB-IoT solution received the "Best IoT Innovation for Mobile Networks" award issued by GSMA at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) Shanghai 2017. As one of the industry's most comprehensive NB-IoT solutions, Huawei's NB-IoT solution was cited for its outstanding achievements and contributions in technological innovation, industry research, and applied practice.
GSMA functions to connect participants throughout the global mobile communications ecosystem, including almost 800 operators and over 300 enterprises. The association lays significant emphasis on addressing common concerns to best serve the interests of mobile operators worldwide. GSMA's "Best IoT Innovation for Mobile Networks" award identifies and rewards Internet of Things (IoT) products, solutions, services, and new business models to highlight innovative breakthroughs based on new technological developments and standards of mobile networks.
Huawei's NB-IoT solution comprises an NB-IoT terminal chipset, terminal operation system LiteOS, NB-IoT RAN and EPC, OceanConnect (a cloud platform for IoT management), and OpenLab that helps related enterprises develop IoT services and applications. The goal of the Huawei NB-IoT solution is to jointly build a better connected IoT solution and ecosystem with operators and partners from a diverse range of vertical industries. Huawei was the first to launch associated products after 3GPP released standards formulated for NB-IoT. In 2016, Huawei began conducting trials NB-IoT applications in conjunction with mainstream operators and partners. In early 2017, Huawei launched Boudica120, the world's first commercial NB-IoT chip.
This year, Huawei successfully achieved a number of development milestones in terms of Smart Metering, Smart Parking, Smart Lighting, Smart Agriculture, and associated sectors. In March 2017, Huawei jointly released the world's first commercial NB-IoT-based Smart Water project in cooperation with Shenzhen Water and China Telecom. This project, involving 800 MHz NB-IoT base stations managed by OceanConnect, established an industry benchmark for NB-IoT-based applications. Two months later, Huawei participated as a strategic partner of China Unicom Shanghai in the trial commercial project for the world's first 4.5G-based large-scale NB-IoT network with continuous coverage. Huawei assisted China Unicom in establishing more than 2600 base stations throughout Shanghai, offering terminals, servers, Apps, and other necessary products for the project. In June, Huawei and China Telecom co-built the world's first NB-IoT-based Smart Lighting project for commercial use in Yingtan, Jiangxi province.
"Huawei feels sincerely grateful in receiving GSMA's prestigious award that represents one of the top achievements of the mobile communications world in Asia," said Jiang Wangcheng, President of Huawei IoT Solution. “This award embodies recognition of the remarkable progress Huawei has made in promoting NB-IoT technological innovation, solution innovation, and ecosystem establishment, as well as advancing development of the mobile communications industry as a whole. 2017 is the starting line for commercial NB-IoT deployment, and Asia, especially China, will be the pace-setter. Huawei will continue to offer a premium product portfolio and open architecture incorporating chips, LiteOS, RAN, EPC, and a cloud platform. Huawei hopes OpenLabs will continue to contribute more to the win-win development of operators and industry partners. All these combined efforts are in favor of a prosperous future for the NB-IoT ecosystem and a fully connected world which is definitely set to be better than ever."
In 2017, Huawei is scheduled to deploy over 30 NB-IoT networks for Utility, Smart City, Smart Agriculture, and other sectors in more than 20 countries across the globe.