NBIoT Support, lack of

[jmarcelino]

@mhibbett
We’re starting NB-IoT tests with carriers in one week (mid January) and will keep everyone posted.

It is a priority and we hope to deliver a working version in February with one large carrier in Europe, but not all geographies will be supported initially as NB-IoT differs in implementations.

If you could let me know your country/carrier of interest it would be helpful.

[mhibbett]

@jmarcelino I'm in Dublin, Ireland. I have a Vodafone SIM. Any help I can provide with your tests, feel free to reach out.

Cheers,

Mike.

[jmarcelino]

@mhibbett
Thanks - and good news our initial implementation should be compatible with Vodafone Ireland.

[mhibbett]

Best wishes - I know from experience that it can be difficult to achieve reliable carrier support. Lots of variables :)

[Kurt Renauer]

@jmarcelino
Hi, my country of interest is Austria and I already have a NB-IoT SIM from T-Mobile Austria. I am looking forward to support you with testing. Let me know if T-Mobile is on your roadmap.
Thx, Kurt

[LS]

Hi,

In Spain we will test it with Vodafone too. Other NBIOT devices work perfectly and we expect FiPy to be the same. Is Vodafone Spain in your roadmap? Will it be ready in February too?

[jmarcelino]

@ls
We are supporting Vodafone across Europe, however Vodafone Spain is a using Huawei which - as much as we'd like to - we won't be able to support with the first firmware releases.

[LS]

Hi jmarcelino, When should we expect a solution for LTE in Spain then? Please realize that Pycom never announced that Spain would not work for the moment when we placed the purchase order.

Is CAT M1 or NBIOT working in Spain with other operator (maybe Orange, Movistar, etc.)?

[jmarcelino]

@ls
We hope to support Huawei-based NB-IoT networks such as Vodafone Spain by late March - this isn't under our control as that support comes from LTE chipset manufacturer. Thank you for your patience.

I'm also not aware of any other live NB-IoT or Cat M1 network in Spain.

[pmb_nl]

@jmarcelino Can you also answer the same question for The Netherlands? I bought the board to testdrive both NB-IoT and LTE-M. T-Mobile was the first that has NB-IoT running so I would like to use the FiPy with their network. They also have a nice technical group & community that possible is willing to assist with the test of using the FiPy.

[fherrador]

Just for your information.

NB IoT is being deployed in major cities in Spain by Vodafone, we have some Quectel units rolling

Cat M1 will be used and deployed in the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona by Telefonica Spain

[brotherdust]

@jmarcelino Count me in for testing! I’m in United States. I believe Verizon has CAT-M1 and NB-IoT coverage where I live. I am using hologram.
Let me know if you need anything else.

[thomand1000]

@jmarcelino Do you have any idea about when you will support Norway/Telia? And when the NB-IOT api will be available to use? I'm writing a master thesis on power consumption in IOT and want to do a comparative analysis of Lora vs NB-IOT. I already use Lopy's for the Lora part, but I'm looking into using the GPy or the FiPy for the LTE-M/NB-IOT part. Any updates in regards to estimates for everything needed to be able to start testing (firmware, software apis etc) would be highly appreciated :)

[HalamRose]

@jmarcelino Can we have an update on NB-IOT? Thanks

[combaindeft]

Hi,

How is the status of maybe supporting NB-IOT in Scandinavia? ... via Telia ? ...

They have announce global coverage in the entire Scandinavian region?

Even if you don't have support right now, we can assist, as we got FiPy modules and nano-sims from Telia and we got some good relationship with Telia and can recieve some help from their technicians :)

/Daniel.

[dan]

Hi @combaindeft,

Send an email to bettina@pycom.io, she'll be able to give you more information on your question

[konpakuto]

This post is deleted!

[BorbonJuggler]

Hello @kurt-renauer I am trying to set up my GPy with a T-Mobile Austria SIM without any success, I am quite new with this, so I after dig a bit in the forum post, I mash up something like this. However, I have not managed to connect to the network

lte.send_at_cmd('AT+CREG=1')
    print(".", end='')
    lte.send_at_cmd('AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","m2m.nbiot.t-mobile.at"')
    print(".", end='')
    lte.send_at_cmd('AT+CGAUTH=1,1,"m2m","sim"')
    print(".", end='')
    lte.send_at_cmd('AT!="RRC::addscanfreq band=28 dl-earfcn=9410"')
    print(".", end='')
    lte.send_at_cmd('AT+CFUN=1')

I was wondering if you can give me any advice for achiving connection.

[Kurt Renauer]

Hi @borbonjuggler, first of all you have to update your sequans modem and you absolutely need support of band = 8 in your sequans modem. For connection to NB provided by TMA it is absolutely necessary! Last year pycom invited gpy-customers to initiate an RMA process for the boards, because at this time it was not possible to activate band 8 by users. i guess that currently shipped gpy-modules should support band 8 (?). Once you have band 8 available, you can follow the NB-IoT tutorial on https://docs.pycom.io/tutorials/lte/nb-iot.html. As far as i remember, last time i didn't even have to use the apn-parameter and band-parameter - simply lte.attach() worked fine.

[Kurt Renauer]

@borbonjuggler take also a look at this: https://forum.pycom.io/topic/3549/important-update-regarding-lte-modem-updates