Deutsche Telekom confirms 5G-ready LTE-M rollout

Deutsche Telekom confirmed plans to roll out 5G-ready LTE-M technology in 2019.

At a summit last week in Vienna, Deutsche Telekom announced the finalists of its hubraum LTE-M Prototyping program, its in-house tech incubator which is operated in partnership with T-Systems. It builds on already successfully implemented prototyping programs for NB-IoT solutions. Almost 150 start-ups and IoT-specialist companies from across Europe and the US submitted LTE-M-based proposals to the hubraum program. A total of 18 solution partners from 12 countries spanning various industries were selected for further cooperation in prototyping LTE-M use cases.

“The summit is the highlight of our prototyping activities and will provide most interesting insights into the business opportunities of LTE-M. We are concurrently working towards first LTE-M network launches in several of our European markets by mid-2019. These will enable our customers to develop and test their LTE-M-based devices and applications,” says Ingo Hofacker, Senior Vice President, responsible for the IoT business at Deutsche Telekom. “LTE-M is an exciting 5G-ready technology and a natural extension of Deutsche Telekom’s Mobile IoT strategy. It completes the IoT landscape as it offers a whole new set of possibilities where other technologies are limited.”