Huawei and Telefonica to launch NB-IoT Open Lab for IOT Business Ecosystems

Huawei and Telefonica have announced the opening a NB-IoT Open Lab to work on the development of products and applications related to Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) technology. The Lab will be opened in Chile in the next few months aimed at boosting the IoT business ecosystem and lead innovation in the IoT space. It will allow IoT players such as equipment vendors, service providers, end-user OEM device makers and application developers, to faster deploy their services and applications over Telefónica´s networks. They will also have early access to new IoT developments by combining Huawei’s resources and capabilities with Telefónica Chile´s well established R&D Centre facilities, resources and know-how.

This Open LAB will have a permanent showroom in Telefónica´s headquarters in Madrid where the newest IoT solutions coming from Chile will be demoed regularly.

The IoT Competence Centre of this NB-IoT Open Lab in Chile will be a meeting point for the IoT community in order to foster the use of the new technologies by organising events such as ‘plug-fests’, collaborative design and testing, tutorial sessions and co-development programmes for start-ups amongst others. It will be a fruitful networking space where different players in the delivery chain can work together to boost the adoption of new IoT services.

Vicente Muñoz, Chief IoT Officer at Telefónica, said, “Telefónica NB-IoT Open Lab is an IoT space that aims at building a complete ecosystem of partners, manufacturers, technicians, developers and designers to bring the best solutions to market around Mobile IoT networks. The Chilean NB-IoT Open Lab will accelerate the development of IoT commercial solutions and ensure they are supported by a broad ecosystem.”

Patrick Zhang, President, Huawei Marketing and Solutions Department said, “We are proud to be partnering with Telefónica in the creation of the NB-IoT Open Lab. The NB-IoT Open Lab will strengthen the strategic cooperation between Huawei and Telefónica on technology innovation and eco-system maturation relating to NB-IoT. Huawei will work closely with Telefónica to launch the NB-IoT Open Lab for continuous technology evolution and acceleration of the commercial deployment.”