AT&T has announced plans to extend its LTE-M network for Internet of Things (IoT) across the US ahead of schedule by the second quarter of 2017 and to Mexico by the end of the year. In a statement, the company said the rollout will ultimately support a North American footprint across its LTE network in the US and Mexico, which already covers nearly 400 million people in the two countries.
The decision to accelerate the LTE-M deployment comes after AT&T carried out a successful pilot of its LTE-M Low-Power Wide-Area network at AT&T Labs in San Ramon. In October the company switched on what it described as North America's first LTE-M enabled commercial site to support the pilot with other ecosystem players.
The company said LTE-M will will be the catalyst for large-scale IoT deployments, offering a combination of enhanced coverage and longer battery life with carrier-grade security for a wide variety of IoT products such as smart utility meters, asset monitoring, vending machines, alarm systems, fleet, heavy equipment, m-health and wearables.
AT&T has launched a second LTE-M pilot location in the Columbus, Ohio, market with RM2, Capstone and other industry leaders and will continue LTE-M testing in San Ramon and Columbus with more players through the end of March.
