Ericsson, China Mobile Shanghai and bike-sharing service Mobike have joined forces to trial cellular IoT technologies on a live network to provide a more convenient and enhanced bike-sharing experience to Mobike users.
Carried out on China Mobile Shanghai’s live network, the trial used cellular IoT technologies from Ericsson – to include LPWA technologies such as NB-IoT for LTE networks – to enable Mobike’s IoT-enabled bikes to be located more accurately and extend to areas that traditional coverage can hardly reach, such as underground parking lots.
Moving forward, the new technologies will also significantly reduce the time to unlock the bikes, and users will enjoy “open upon scanning” without waiting.
Ericsson says cellular-based IoT provides better coverage and faster response time with narrower bandwidth and fewer resources than cellular technology. Compared to traditonal cellular networks, NB-IoT introduces energy-saving and deep-coverage features which enable five-to-seven-fold coverage improvements for operators in the same site environment. The battery life also extends to more than 10 years.
The successful trial marks an important step forward in the large-scale commercial deployment of cellular IoT in China, said Gang Huang, deputy general manager of China Mobile Group Shanghai Company.
Mobike VP Yang Zhongjie said, “The latest cellular IoT technologies like CAT-M1 and NB-IoT will greatly enhance user experience in the future and will solve the existing challenges encountered by Mobike such as coverage in challenging locations. We also expect Chinese operators to complete the nationwide deployment of cellular IoT as early as possible.”
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