With the official inclusion of NB-IoT in the global 5G standard, the life cycle and application scenarios of NB-IoT technology will be greatly expanded.

1. C&T RF Antennas Inc
www.ctrfantennas.com rfproducts1@ctrfantennas.com
Please Contact us for more information, thank you.
 Jasmine Lu (+86)17322110281
NB-IoT incorporated into 5G international standards
With the official inclusion of NB-IoT in the global 5G standard, the life cycle and application
scenarios of NB-IoT technology will be greatly expanded.
The ITU-R WP 5D#35e remote conference held by the International Telecommunication Union
(ITU) this week announced that the 3GPP5G technology (including NB-IoT) meets the
requirements of the IMT-2020 5G technical standards and is officially accepted as ITU IMT-2020
5G technical standards.
This also means that NB-IoT, which is dominated by the Chinese industrial chain, has not only
received widespread recognition and support from the global industrial chain in practice but has
also been officially incorporated into the global 5G standard.
Four years of actual combat to achieve positive results
It is understood that NB-IoT, which only completed its standardization work for the first time in
June 2016, has only been in four years. The rapid development of NB-IoT has taken the road of
2G narrow-band Internet of Things for many years. The data shows that up to now, 71 countries
have invested in 129 mobile Internet of Things in the world, including 93 NB-IoT networks.
For the future of NB-IoT, 3GPP has already indicated that NB-IoT will continue to serve 5G LPWA
use cases. 5G LPWA is mMTC (mass machine communication), which is one of the three major
application scenarios of 5G and has become an indispensable part of 5G technical specifications.
The missing part.
In July 2019, at the ITU-R WP5D#32 meeting held at that time, my country completed the
complete submission of the IMT-2020 (5G) candidate technical solution and obtained the official
acceptance confirmation letter from the ITU regarding the 5G candidate technical solution. The
5G technical solution submitted by my country clearly pointed out that China's 5G wireless air
interface technology (RIT) solution is based on 3GPP New Air Interface (NR) and Narrowband
Internet of Things (NB-IoT) technologies. Among them, NR focuses on meeting the technical

2. C&T RF Antennas Inc
www.ctrfantennas.com rfproducts1@ctrfantennas.com
Please Contact us for more information, thank you.
 Jasmine Lu (+86)17322110281
requirements of enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) and low latency and high reliability (URLLC)
scenarios. NB-IoT meets the technical requirements of large-scale machine connection (mMTC)
scenarios.
In this ITU-R WP 5D#35e remote conference, 3GPP technology was officially accepted as the ITU
IMT-2020 5G technology standard. It is reported that the 3GPP technologies adopted this time
include: 3GPP NR + NB-IoT RIT submitted by China, NR+LTESRIT, and NR RIT submitted by 3GPP,
and 3GPP NR RIT submitted by South Korea. These 4 5G technology submissions are equivalent
and all Converged into 3GPP technology and unified into 5G technical standards.
So far, NB-IoT, which is dominated by my country's industrial chain, has been officially included in
the 5G international standard.
Life cycle and application scenarios have expanded significantly
With the official inclusion of NB-IoT in the global 5G standard, the life cycle and application
scenarios of NB-IoT technology will be greatly expanded.
With the characteristics of wide coverage, low power consumption, low cost, and large
connection, NB-IoT has already become the mainstream technology in the field of cellular IoT.
According to the latest research data from market research organization Counterpoint IoT, the
number of global IoT cellular connections will exceed the 5 billion mark by 2025, and the
contribution ratio of NB-IoT will be close to half.
In terms of specific application scenarios, NB-IoT has been used in smart water meters, smart gas
meters, electric vehicle tracking, smart smoke sensing, and other industries. It is expected that
there will be tens of millions of connections within one or two years, and it is expected to reach
one billion levels soon. scale.
As NB-IoT is included in the 5G standard system, it also means that NB-IoT will become an
integral part of the 5G industry ecology. In the 5G era, NB-IoT is expected to take off the label of
"only for meter reading", because in addition to the above application scenarios, NB-IoT will also
be used in smart smoke, smart door locks, smart home, smart parking, smart wear, etc. The field
of smart cities and smart homes is promising.
With the commercialization of 5G on a large scale, the withdrawal of 2G and 3G has become a
general trend. Several core IoT technologies based on NB-IoT+4G+5GNR will play a major role in
opening up the Internet of Everything. After 2G and 3G are gradually withdrawn from the
Internet, NB-IoT will carry the requirements for large-scale, narrowband, low-rate, and voice-free
IoT scenarios in the next decade.
For a long time, whether NB-IoT can develop for a long time is one of the factors for enterprises
to look forward and backward when doing NB-IoT, and it is also a major obstacle in the
development of NB-IoT. With the official inclusion of NB-IoT in the global 5G standard,
NB-IoT-related companies can finally continue to do a lot in the 5G era without worries and open
hands.
Benefit from the domestic industrial chain, my country will continue to lead 5G technology
It is worth mentioning that from standards to chips and modules, to system equipment and
overall solutions, NB-IoT is mainly dominated by the Chinese industrial chain.
For example, on the chip side, Chinese chip companies are competing for the NB-IoT SoC chip

3. C&T RF Antennas Inc
www.ctrfantennas.com rfproducts1@ctrfantennas.com
Please Contact us for more information, thank you.
 Jasmine Lu (+86)17322110281
market; at the module level, Chinese module manufacturers have taken the lead and scale
advantage in the NB-IoT field.
At the same time, the three major domestic operators are also very active in developing NB-IoT.
At present, the number of NB-IoT connections of the three major operators has exceeded 100
million, and the number of connections between the three operators exceeds 10 million, of
which two have exceeded 40 million.
Before this NB-IoT officially entered the 5G international standard, the relevant competent
authorities in my country have made very sensible guidelines for the future development
direction of my country's mobile Internet of Things. In May of this year, the Ministry of Industry
and Information Technology issued a "Notice on Further Promoting the Comprehensive
Development of the Mobile Internet of Things", which pointed out the promotion of 2G/3G IoT
business migration and transfer to the establishment of NB-IoT (narrowband Internet of Things),
4G (including LTE-Cat1, namely Rate category 1 4G network) and 5G coordinated development of
a comprehensive ecosystem of mobile Internet of Things, on the basis of deepening 4G network
coverage and accelerating the construction of 5G networks, NB-IoT is used to meet the needs of
most low-rate scenarios, and LTE-Cat1 ( Hereinafter referred to as Cat1) to meet the needs of
medium-rate IoT and voice, and meet the needs of higher-speed, low-latency networking with 5G
technology. And for the first time, clearly guide the new IoT terminals to stop using 2G/3G
networks, and promote the migration of existing 2G/3G IoT services to NB-IoT/4G (Cat1)/5G
networks; encourage the local establishment of special support and innovation funds to support
NB -Development of IoT and Cat1 special chips, modules, equipment, and other products to
improve chip R&D and manufacturing capabilities to meet large-scale shipment needs.
It is believed that as NB-IoT officially enters the 5G international standard, the construction of
NB-IoT will be further accelerated, which will play a significant role in boosting the large-scale
commercial use of NB-IoT, and domestic manufacturers in NB-IoT related fields will also directly
benefit. At the same time, this will also bring a huge boost to my country's continued leadership
of 5G technology.