Indian telco Bharti Airtel is working with local company Secure Meters to deploy NB-IoT services that will power 1.3 million smart meters in homes in Bihar.

This deployment will be India’s first NB-IoT option on a narrow band with a fall-back option that will work on 2G and 4G and ensure real-time connectivity and uninterrupted transfer of critical data.

NB-IoT is a low-power, wide area, radio network technology developed by 3GPP that enables a wide variety of IoT devices and services including smart meters.

“IoT is one of the fastest-growing business segments for Airtel,” said Ajay Chitkara, CEO of Airtel Business. “This venture into NB-IoT strengthens our credentials as the largest cellular IoT player in the country and places us firmly as a partner of choice for those looking to invest in smart meters. We look forward to being an active player in India’s energy transition.”

Ananya Singhal, joint MD at Secure Meters, added: “We are thrilled to have partnered with Airtel for the implementation of NB-IoT services in our smart meter rollout in north Bihar. Their expertise, professionalism and dedication to providing top-notch services ensured we learnt together and had a successful launch. With Airtel’s support, we were able to seamlessly connect and monitor our meters, resulting in greater efficiency and cost savings for Secure and for our customers in north Bihar. We thank Bihar management and staff for enabling us to work together. We highly recommend Airtel to anyone looking to implement NB-IoT services in their IoT and look forward to a growing partnership.”

Airtel’s NB-IoT platform is scalable to 5G. Its NB-IoT proposition also includes its IoT Hub, which has been customised to suit the needs of advance metering infrastructure service providers (AMISPs). Its enterprise-grade feasibility tool helps AMISPs plan their meter deployments better. Other functionalities include customer life cycle management and analytics tools such as diagnostics, live sessions check and real-time data usage.

Airtel’s network is ready for pan India NB-IoT deployment.

Headquartered in India, Airtel is a communications provider with over 500 million customers in 17 countries across south Asia and Africa. The company ranks among the top three mobile operators globally and its networks cover over two billion people. Airtel is India’s largest integrated communications provider and the second-largest mobile operator in Africa.

Since delivering India’s first commercially viable electronic energy meter in 1987, Secure Meter today employs 6500 people worldwide, with offices in Australia, Bangladesh, India, Italy, Malaysia, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, UAE and UK, and deploys products in more than 60 countries.