Vodafone is launching NB-IoT services across rural areas in New Zealand.

In partnership with the Rural Connectivity Group (RCG), NB-IoT has been made available for Vodafone NZ customers across more rural areas in the country. Building on its existing 4G and 5G coverage, Vodafone expects to reach more than 60% geographic land coverage on NB-IoT over the next few years as its regional investment programme continues and the Rural Broadband Initiative 2 (RBI2) reaches completion.

In addition, Vodafone was again named as a leader by Gartner in the 2022 Magic Quadrant for managed IoT connectivity services, worldwide, lending weight to Vodafone’s offering in IoT and 5G capability. Gartner defines a leader in the Magic Quadrant as a company that executes well against its current vision and is well positioned for tomorrow.

IoT is on the rise, and 4G, 5G and LPWA expansion is bringing better connection to even more New Zealanders. Vodafone continues to build its IoT coverage footprint to support New Zealand businesses as they seek productivity and operational benefits with IoT.

NB-IoT is well suited for applications sending small amounts of data across long distances using low bandwidth, such as water trough monitoring, pasture moisture content and gate operations. NB-IoT improves the power consumption of user devices, system capacity and spectrum efficiency, especially in deep coverage.

The technology requires little power for devices to connect so it is suitable for battery-powered devices and sensors, enabling battery life of more than ten years in some cases.

“We’re delighted to be able to start offering NB-IoT to more of our customers across New Zealand,” said Tina Wilkerson, product owner for IoT at Vodafone NZ. “We’re looking forward to helping all New Zealanders find new and innovative solutions that use IoT to power their businesses.”

TheRCG is a joint venture by New Zealand’s mobile network operators Vodafone, Spark and 2degrees to bring mobile and wireless broadband coverage to rural New Zealand.

• Spark New Zealand is to take a significant shareholding in IoT provider Adroit. Adroit will also appoint two Spark-nominated directors to its five-person board. Mark Beder, Spark technology director, said this investment reinforced Spark’s commitment to IoT as a key future growth market for the business.

“Our three-year strategy identifies IoT as a key future market, and in the last financial year we saw strong revenue growth and an 83%increase in connections,” said Beder. “By further strengthening our partnership with Adroit we hope to accelerate this growth even further.”

Adroit specialises in environmental IoT technology and has developed innovations for key sectors including aquaculture, agriculture, construction, manufacturing and environmental compliance.

Adroit CEO Blair Stewart said: “We’re seeing significant demand for IoT environmental monitoring as businesses become aware of the technology’s capabilities and benefits. Spark’s investment in Adroit and our close partnership enables us to meet this demand while continuing to operate as a specialist player, whether that’s for a family-owned market gardener like Auckland’s Hira Bhana, right through to corporates and local government.”