In a connected society, where the open economy has removed boundaries between industries, making the speed and agility to market critical components in the digital world. Our purpose at Vodacom Business is to become trusted digital advisors to business executives of our most important clients by helping them join the dots between their business, technologies, and human experiences.

Introducing Narrowband IoT

NB-IoT provides strong coverage over broad areas, even when devices are underground or deep within buildings. It also offers great power efficiency, so devices can run on batteries for ten years or more without the need for a charge. The technology is built on low-cost communications hardware and its low bandwidth requirements mean that most use cases require just a few bytes of data to be transmitted per device per day.

These performance characteristics mean NB-IoT is unlocking a new wave of applications that have not previously benefited from connectivity due to barriers such as power, cost and propagation.

Here are five ways that NB-IoT is delivering real value to South African businesses:

Farming with foresight

Smart agriculture depends on regular updates of ambient conditions. Increasingly, food producers are using tiny, underground soil sensors which connect to a central dashboard to monitor factors such as moisture and salinity. Farmers need to deploy sensors over wide areas and in most cases without reliable access to the network. With NB-IoT these sensors can connect seamlessly allowing farmers to make accurate decisions based on the data gathered from these sensors.

Livestock monitoring

Livestock monitoring systems, using devices installed on the neck of a cow or a sheep, are having a positive impact on farm management strategies. Such systems can be used to provide basic information to the modern livestock industry, including animal positioning and well-being. This new level of connectivity is helping farmers to improve farm management efficiency and improve the yield of milk. With technology such as NB-IoT, farmers do not need to deploy and maintain a communication network of their own.

Safer buildings

There are hundreds of millions of smoke and fire alarms fitted in domestic and commercial buildings all over the world. These assets are often highly-distributed, yet dumb, with an inability to interact with building owners or maintenance teams. But what if smoke and fire detections were wirelessly connected? That would enable them to report on their operational status at regular intervals. And what if they were designed to have ultra-low power consumption with a battery standby of more than 10 years? That would dramatically reduce maintenance complexity and cost. These technical characteristics can be offered by NB IoT-enabled detectors, helping to create the smarter and safer buildings of tomorrow.

Power to the people

Utilities worldwide are installing smart meters to monitor customers’ usage of energy or water in near real-time, cutting costs and helping to balance supply and demand. But it can be difficult to connect meters deep inside buildings, in basements or under manhole covers. However, a recent trial by Spanish utility firm Aguas de Valencia showed that NB-IoT could provide a reliable solution to these historic connectivity problems. The company successfully tested NB-IoT’s ability to provide remote coverage across a wide range of hard-to-reach meter locations such as meter rooms in basements, meter boxes below ground, and recess niches with metal covers that block the signal. The results showed that the technology could cope with any conditions, providing reliable data quality and security.

Enable a smarter, connected future with Vodacom NB-IoT

Strong coverage over large areas, even underground or deep within urban infrastructure over a massive scale and a low bandwidth.