German IoT network carrier 1NCE has launched its NB-IoT roaming offering in mainland China.

The 1NCE IoT Flat Rate with NB-IoT and 4G coverage is available for €10 for ten years, including 500Mbyte data and 250 SMS.

This lets international companies enter the Chinese market with their IoT products, as well as Chinese companies expand their IoT businesses worldwide.

Besides NB-IoT service for mainland China, the China+ SIM card also provides 4G coverage for markets including Hong Kong and Macao. The multi-coverage SIM card provides the technological basis for the 1NCE IoT Flat Rate. It allows for smooth transitioning between different mobile communication standards, including 2G, 3G, 4G, NB-IoT and LTE-M.

With more than 3500 customers, 1NCE has sold over five million SIM cards since August 2018.

China Telecom’s premium 4G and 5G network supports a wide variety of IoT use cases. The low- and medium-speed requirements are handled with NB-IoT and Cat-1 networks. The number of NB-connected devices has now exceeded 70 million, ranging from smart home appliances to smart city devices.

In the 5G era, China Telecom has invested heavily to support applications including HD video, autonomous driving and beyond. After launching the world’s first SA commercial network capability in 2019 in Shenzhen, China Telecom accelerated the construction of a nationwide SA network for commercial use.

“By overcoming technical obstacles in the integration between both networks and supporting a new NB-IoT roaming model, we have successfully enabled 1NCE to launch its regional NB-IoT offering,” said He An, CTG executive vice president. “We are proud to have reached this milestone with 1NCE as one of our first commercial NB-IoT carrier partners. Not only for those international customers needing IoT connectivity services for China, China Telecom Global is also actively supporting domestic Chinese manufactures for overseas NB deployment. 1NCE as our partner will allow us to extend our offering to more parts of the world.”

The collaboration with CTG makes 1NCE one of the first IoT carriers worldwide to offer a high-quality system for seamless NB-IoT and 4G connectivity across the world. Its robust and scalable footprint provides benefits to multinational customers such as original equipment manufacturers.

“With the 1NCE IoT Flat Rate we create a new, unprecedented standard for IoT connectivity for the markets in Greater China,” said Alexander Sator, CEO of 1NCE. “We are pleased to start our coverage expansion together with China Telecom Global now. The Covid-19 pandemic is keeping the world in suspense, but innovation must continue. And connectivity, communication and digitisation have never been more important.”

At next week’s virtual Cloud Expo Asia Hong Kong on 23 to 24 September, 1NCE will introduce its offering in a joint video statement presented by the 1NCE and CTG senior management

CTG is a wholly owned subsidiary of China Telecom. Established in 2012, headquartered in Hong Kong, CTG connects the Asia Pacific region and the world by leveraging on its resources in mainland China.

1NCE is a fully-fledged IoT network carrier offering connectivity services worldwide based on an IoT flat rate. This makes IoT applications such as smart metering or vehicle telematics affordable. 1NCE cooperates with Deutsche Telekom and its roaming partners as well as China Telecom Global.