NB-IoT Coverage in the UK

[Wile E IoT]

Hi all,

I'm thinking of using NB-IoT for a project in the UK. I won't have any control over where the finished units get installed, so I'm hoping for reasonable, national coverage and I've been looking online to try to find out if I can expect that. All I've been able to find out so-far is that Vodafone seems to be the only operator providing it and they don't seem to publish any coverage info. O2 seem to have gone the LTE-M route and they have published a detailed coverage map. At the moment, I can only assume that Voda's NB-IoT map wouldn't compare well with that, or they'd publish it. I'd love to have some real info though.

I've tried contacting Vodafone but, in the meantime, does anyone have any experience of NB-IoT in the UK? What sort of coverage are you getting?

Cheers,

Colin.

[TIOUK]

Voda NB-IOT is behind a firewall and can only forward packets to a specified IP address they whitelist, so if you use a cloud service by URL as your service IP may change as you shut down and spin up a new resource, it doesn't work.

NB-IOT is, or was when we trialed it last year, single homed, so no roaming if your vendor has a network problem or the cell site is down for maintenance and you can't pick up another due to coverage.

Even though we had a trail with micro sims and embedded sims for devices we made for the trial, they weren't really that responsive. Voda appeared to want to compete by making devices and offering the full service.