Press Releases

Budapest, April 5, 2017 14:00

Heart rhythm monitoring shirt, smart lighting, unloosable keyring - some ideas with which you may apply for Telekom’s newly launched NB-IoT competition.

Magyar Telekom - in cooperation with Kitchen Budapest and with the network support of Ericsson - launches a competition to generate Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) based ideas in the area of transportation, traveling, event oriented solutions, home environment and logistics. The company primarily expects the application of university students, developers, engineers, economists, startups or companies. Applicants may submit their applications until June 5 on their own or in teams in the category of “idea” or “prototype” - depending on the level of elaboration of the invention.  The total sum of the awards is 1,200,000 HUF.

“The NB-IoT technology opens new opportunities in many areas that make our lives easier or make companies more effective. This competiton seeks NB-IoT based ideas that may create value added products or services with a market potential that may fit even Telekom’s portfolio” - said Mátyás Dobó, Magyar Telekom’s director responsible for innovation. He also added: “The winners’ prototypes are planned to be built this year - the necessary environment and technological background will be provided by Telekom. The best applicants - besides the monetary award - will have the opportunity to present their ideas to Magyar Telekom’s and Kitchen Budapest’s managers and NB-IoT experts. Through Telekom's partner programs the ideas may even go international.”

For more details on the terms and conditions of the application, please visit after April 10: www.nbiot.kibu.hu .

Narrow Band-IoT is a new standardized mobile technology that can run on the operators’ existing networks, optimized for the Internet of Things (IoT). Thanks to its unique capabilities a huge number of cheap tools (sensors) can be connected to the system. The solution can be perfectly used indoors, it has a very small energy demand and it can significantly improve the current mobile network coverage, too. Owing to this latter feature the solution can be used in areas where it is hard to provide sufficient signal strength (e.g. in forests, ducts, channels). The network elements communicate with each other at a low bandwidth, and this is by the name “NarrowBand” comes from.

At the first step on the road to 5G Deutsche Telekom announced in this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that the company continues the implementation of the new, standardized and cost-effective NB-IoT technology and its commercial rollout in Europe.  The commercial launch of Deutsche Telekom’s NB-IoT service is expected in the second quarter of 2017 in Germany while smart metering, smart parking and device monitoring is in its pilot phase with major customers of the company.

In 2017 Deutsche Telekom is planning to expand the current NB-IoT coverage in Hungary, Austria, Croatia, Greece, Poland and Slovakia.  In Budapest Magyar Telekom is already testing a technology that digitizes parking places with the help of Narrowband IoT. To this end sensors have to be installed in parking places that include an NB-IoT module and power source at the same time. The sensor gives a signal if a car parks in the parking place (i.e. the sensor's status changes). The service can be expanded with an application that helps drivers to find free parking places.