Bhubaneswar : Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), one of India’s leading telecommunications services
providers, today, announced its partnership with Secure Meters for deploying Narrow Band
(NB-IoT) services that will power 1.3 million homes in Bihar through a smart meter solution.
This deployment will be India’s first NB-IoT solution on a narrow band with a fall-back option
that will work on 2G and 4G and ensure real-time connectivity and uninterrupted transfer of
critical data. NB-IoT is a low-power, wide area, radio network technology developed by 3GPP
which enables a wide variety of IoT devices and services including smart meters.
Ajay Chitkara, Director and CEO, Airtel Business, commenting on this venture, said, “IoT is one
of the fastest-growing business segments for Airtel Business. This venture into NB-IoT
strengthens our credentials as the largest cellular IoT player in the country and places us firmly
as a partner of choice for Discoms looking to invest in smart meters. We look forward to being
an active player in India’s energy transition.”
Ananya Singhal, Joint MD ─ Secure Meters, said, “We are thrilled to have partnered with Airtel
for the implementation of NB-IoT services in our smart meter rollout in North Bihar. Their
expertise, professionalism and dedication to providing top-notch services ensured we learnt
together and had a successful launch. With Airtel’s support, we were able to seamlessly
connect and monitor our meters, resulting in greater efficiency and cost savings for Secure and
for our customers in North Bihar. We thank Bihar Discom management and staff for enabling us
to work together. We highly recommend Airtel to anyone looking to implement NB-IoT services
in their IoT solutions and look forward to a growing partnership.”
Airtel’s NB-IoT platform is future-ready and is scalable to 5G. Airtel’s NB-IoT proposition also
includes its advanced IoT platform ‘The Airtel IoT Hub’ which has been customised to suit the
needs of Advance Metering Infrastructure Service Providers (AMISPs). Its Enterprise grade
Feasibility Tool helps AMISPs plan their meter deployments better. Other functionalities include
customer life cycle management and advanced analytics tools like diagnostics, live sessions
check, and real-time data usage among others.
Airtel’s network is ready for pan India NB-IoT deployment. It is designed for superior coverage
to address the specific needs of the IoT market.
