T-Mobile US announced it will start selling what it claims to be the first asset tracking solution in the United States, the telco said in a release.
T-Mobile US partnered with Roambee for its BeeAware asset tracking IoT offering. The solution will be offered via the carrier’s narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) network.
T-Mobile US highlighted that its NB-IoT network provides significant telecom-grade security advantages over technologies that operate on unlicensed airwaves such as LoRaWAN, BLE and RFID, among others.
“We’ve hit a sweet spot of value and security with narrowband IoT that we think will really kickstart the growth of the asset tracking segment,” said Mike Katz, EVP of T-Mobile for Business. “This is great news for companies that need an asset tracking platform, but it also marks a new era for T-Mobile for Business. We’re combining the Un-carrier approach, the strength of our sales team and the reach of our nationwide network to deliver unique solutions.”
The U.S. carrier said that the Roambee’s BeeAware asset tracker easily attaches to shipments, pallets, or individual assets to provide item-level location and temperature monitoring indoors, in-transit and outdoors.
“We’re enabling mass market adoption of enterprise asset tracking” said Sanjay Sharma, CEO of Roambee. “Powered by Roambee’s purposefully-built, capex-free sensor technology and asset tracking platform, this solution eliminates the four biggest barriers to enterprise IoT adoption: high cost, cumbersome setup, constant maintenance, and complex data security. Together with T-Mobile’s NB-IoT network and Roambee’s proven solutions that global companies have come to rely on, we’re here to make IoT asset tracking universally deployable on a large scale.”
BeeAware data can be accessed with Roambee’s Honeycomb API, which integrates with existing enterprise software to provide a desktop and mobile portal for end-to-end supply chain monitoring.
T-Mobile said that the asset tracking solution help businesses and supply chain managers:
-Track high-value assets to prevent loss
-Optimize shipping routes for faster delivery times and lower operational costs
-Manage risk of theft and degradation of cold chain goods with near real-time status updates
The T-Mobile BeeAware solution is available for $10 per device per month, which also includes portal access and NB-IoT data, the carrier said.
T-Mobile had launched its NB-IoT network in the United States in July 2018. At the time of the launch, the telco said that its service was the first NB-IoT network in the U.S. and the first one in the world that leverages guard bands, which are narrow slices of unused spectrum meant to separate frequency ranges and prevent interference.
T-Mobile US said that it worked with vendors Ericsson, Nokia and Qualcomm Technologies to deploy the NB-IoT network.
Rival operator AT&T’s NB-IoT network went live this year in late April. AT&T previously launched an LTE-M network for IoT in 2017.
Meanwhile, Verizon launched its NB-IoT network in May. Verizon claimed its NB-IoT network covered 92% of the U.S population. Sprint has recently started to test NB-IoT technology in the country.
