MTN Africa has partnered with Huawei to jointly launch the Smart Water Metering solution, the first Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) solution in Africa. The Smart Water Metering service from MTN will be commercially deployed in 2017.
With the launch, MTN plans to further develop their NB-IoT services for other services including for wildlife tracking, smart farm, and smart parking.
The Smart Water metering solution enables the automated collection of utility meter data, while manual meter reading leads to high labor costs and missing or inaccurate data. Through sensors installed in water meters, customers can identify water pipeline leakage earlier. Household water meters will automatically report data on a regular basis, reducing fault probabilities and the operating expense.
Powered by the NB-IoT technology by Huawei, the sensor array is designed to serve as a diagnostic spine that underpins network management. The data gathered can be used to control waste water flows from each property, identify faults across the network and improve health and safety outcomes.
NB-IoT is a new technology that will extend the utilization of IoT by making it more efficient to connect objects requiring a long battery life and are located in hard to reach areas to the Internet by ways of mobile connectivity.
Babak Fouladi, Group Chief Technology and Information Officer, Interim SA CTO of MTN
NB-IoT is viewed by the industry as the answer for enterprise applications in a range of different areas, from utility meters to sensor monitoring to asset-tracking. In line with our strategy to explore new enterprise markets, MTN is glad to lead the application of this new technology in Africa.
Jacky Chen, Managing Director of Huawei MTN Key Account Group
The number of cellular IoT connections in Africa will grow seven-fold over the next three to four years, and NB-IoT will be a key driver for this trend. Together with our partners, Huawei is applying groundbreaking NB-IoT innovation to solve core challenges around IoT applications.
