Deutsche Telekom completed the rollout of its 5G-ready LTE-M network across Germany and brings its first commercial offers to the market. In Germany, LTE-M is now commercially available in both post-paid and pre-paid IoT offerings, including its Business Smart Connect LPWA and M2M tariffs.

To secure interoperability, Deutsche Telekom already completed first certifications of a handful of LTE-M chipsets and modules, thereby enabling faster user time-to-market and connectivity quality.

“LTE-M gives our customers the opportunity to develop new solutions where previous technologies had their limitations,” says Rami Avidan, CEO of Deutsche Telekom IoT GmbH. “The technology is a firm part of our overall IoT network portfolio. It is 5G-ready and therefore future-proof – ideally positioned to drive innovation for the Internet of Things even further.”

LTE-M is an important IoT technology to bridge the gap between the existing 4G offering and NarrowBand IoT. It is also regarded as a future-proof successor of 2G and 3G as those technologies are gradually phased out across the globe. LTE-M enables new use cases across a multitude of industry sectors, most notably in the areas of smart city, wearables, e-health and smart tracking.

A smart combination

The 5G-ready LTE-M technology is a natural extension of Deutsche Telekom’s Mobile IoT strategy. It is specifically designed for IoT connectivity and combines the power-saving advantages of both NB-IoT and earlier LTE technologies: In comparison to NB-IoT, LTE-M offers higher data rates (up to 350 kbit/s), lower latency, connected mobility (i.e. the ability of a technology to do handover between cells), and SMS support. In comparison to legacy M2M technologies like 2G, 3G and standard LTE, LTE-M offers optimized energy consumption and superior indoor coverage, as well as up to a 50% lower module cost. With these characteristics, LTE-M is in a position to address an entirely different set of use cases.

5G-ready

LTE-M is based on the LTE 3GPP standard. It is therefore 5G-ready and only requires a software update in the network. The NB-IoT and LTE-M technologies will continue evolving as part of the 3GPP 5G specifications. This means that all users can leverage existing investments as part of the 5G evolution. The long-term viability of these technologies is therefore secured.

IoT without borders

Deutsche Telekom and its Roaming Partner Orange in France and Belgium have agreed to activate LTE-M Roaming across their respective networks, enabling their IoT customers to take full advantage of the power-efficient technology across borders.

Roaming is available bilaterally between Germany and France as of July 22nd, 2020, Roaming between Germany and Belgium will be added within the next few weeks.