Vodafone announced at the Huawei Global Mobile Broadband Forum that mobile operators stand to lose swathes of the potential IoT industry to traditional WiFi solutions , unless they move quickly to finalise the NB - IoT standard . mobile ’s Head of R&D , Luke Ibbetson , said that whilst the company was encouraged by the government toward agreeing a Narrow Band - IoT ##T standard , and there will be a " revival of the technology by the end of December , [ but ] we ’re close to losing patience . ” Vodafone is working with both Telekom and Huawei to develop and trial NB - IoT networks , but faces competition from non - traditional IoT network providers such as French startup SIGFOX , which utilises its own ultra narrowband network and array of base stations to develop a specialist M2 wireless communications platform designed for low - power , always - on devices .
Vodafone announced at the Huawei Global Mobile Broadband Forum that mobile operators stand to lose swathes of the potential IoT industry to traditional WiFi solutions, unless they act quickly to finalise the NB-IoT standard. Vodafone’s Head of R&D, Luke Ibbetson, said that whilst the company was encouraged by the progress toward agreeing a Narrow Band-IoT communications standard, and there will be a "flavour of the technology by the end of December, [but] we’re close to losing patience.” Vodafone is working with Deutsche Telekom and Huawei to develop and trial NB-IoT networks, but faces competition from non-traditional IoT network providers such as French startup SIGFOX, which utilises its own ultra narrowband network and array of base stations to provide a specialist M2M communications platform designed for low-power, always-on devices.