This will be India’s first NB-IoT service with a fall-back
option to ensure continuous connectivity
New Delhi, April 24, 2023: 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.
About Bharti Airtel:
Headquartered in India, Airtel is a global communications
solutions provider with over 500 Mn customers in 17 countries
across South Asia and Africa. The company ranks amongst the
top three mobile operators globally and its networks cover
over two billion people. Airtel is India’s largest integrated
communications solutions provider and the second-largest
mobile operator in Africa. Airtel’s retail portfolio includes
high-speed 4G/5G mobile broadband and Airtel Xstream Fiber
that promises speeds up to 1 Gbps with convergence across
linear and on-demand entertainment, streaming services
spanning music and video, digital payments and financial
services. For enterprise customers, Airtel offers a gamut of
solutions that includes secure connectivity, cloud and data
centre services, cyber security, IoT, Ad Tech and CPaaS
(Airtel IQ). For more details visit
www.airtel.com
About Secure Meters:
Secure is a multi-national corporation committed to providing
revenue management, power quality and energy efficiency to its
customers and communities, enabling them to save money, reduce
energy consumption and facilitate comfortable living. Since
delivering India’s first commercially viable electronic energy
meter in 1987, Secure today employs 6500 people worldwide,
with offices in Australia, Bangladesh, India, Italy, Malaysia,
Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, UAE, and the United Kingdom,
and deploys products in more than 60 countries. Secure Meters
also offers metering, billing and collection services for
electricity and gas, energy efficiency monitoring, older care
products, and many other solutions and services.
