Verizon is aiming to become the first U.S. wireless operator to launch Category M1 (Cat-M1) technology with a planned deployment later this year.
The carrier on Thursday said it is “working closely” with chipset, module and device partners including Altair, Sequans, U-Blox, Telit, Sierra Wireless, Gemalto, Nokia, Ericsson and others to make the launch a reality by the close of 2016.
3GPP completed the standards for Narrowband-IoT – of which Cat-M1 is a part – back in June of this year.
Cat-M1 is a version of LTE technology that functions on 1.4 MHz spectrum and is used to connect devices to the Internet of Things (IoT). Though the technology only comes with average upload speeds between 200 kbps and 400 kbps it also requires much less power, enabling a decade-long battery life or more.
Verizon previously launched Cat-M1’s standardized predecessor Category 1 (Cat-1) for IoT devices in December.
The carrier said its new Cat-M1 ecosystem will help reduce the cost of IoT deployments, which in turn will help innovators, developers and business scale from millions to billions of connected devices.
“Up until now, the cost to connect devices to a wide-area network has been a barrier to widespread IoT,” Verizon Vice President of Mobile Devices and OS Technology Rosemary McNally said. “By evolving our device ecosystem to include Cat-M1, we’re aligning Verizon’s 4G LTE network to the needs of future IoT deployments. We are also taking direct aim at emerging low power wireless access (LPWA) solutions, which have entered the U.S. market, but do not offer the same level of scale, coverage and security as LTE.”
Verizon’s news comes on the heels of AT&T’s July announcement of a planned Cat-M1 pilot program that is expected to launch later this year in San Francisco, Calif.
AT&T said its pilot partners represent a variety of IoT use cases, including alarm monitoring, smart meters, vending inventory and propane tank monitoring. AT&T said Thursday it will be using Sierra Wireless’ AirPrime LTE-M modules for the tests.
AT&T said it is aiming to make Cat-M1 available commercially sometime in 2017.