Working with Ericsson, Russian service provider VEON has launched a narrowband IoT trial in a Moscow district.
The NB-IoT trial spans utilities, social services, environmental monitoring services and applications across the Maryino area, which is Moscow's most populated district. Participants in the trial were issued special SIM cards that give them access to the restricted network. Access to the network will be free until the commercial launch near the end of this year.
Using Ericsson's gear on VEON's NB-IoT network, the trial enabled up to 10,000 connected devices per base station. Ericsson has installed two base stations in the one-kilometer trial zone. The network is provisioned across the 800 MHz 20 band.
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The technology is deployed on LTE and optimized for the low speed collection of telemetric data from the meters. The low-data speed rate is about 20/60kbps uplink/downlink. Ericsson said the network signal penetrated hard-to-reach places such as basements, water risers, and underground parking, which is beneficial for testing IoT devices.
"The pilot zone that we have created is a modern mobile project designed for testing advanced IoT solutions out of laboratories," said Artashes Sivkov, executive vice president, PJSC VimpelCom, in a prepared statement. "We are eager to empower business to study, test, identify and eliminate errors in the product by testing it in a real urban environment."