Huawei and Telefonica have announced that they have signed a strategic Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to work together on jointly developing the NB-IoT markets in Europe and Latin America.

The two companies have already started their first trials of a NB-IoT solution and are aiming to start to launch commercially in Europe and Latin America during 2017. The MOU marks the beginning of a new phase of comprehensive collaboration for the two companies. They will also start collaboration concerning the alignment of end-to-end NB-IoT solutions, interoperability, ecosystems, IoT platform evolution and joint marketing, to develop the upcoming large-scale commercialization of IoT, and enabling Telefonica to boost the number of connected devices in the next 5 years.

The end-to-end NB-IoT solution is designed to meet Telefonica’s requirements for massive IoT services with low-power and wide-area (LPWA) coverage. Developed based on 3GPP standards, the solution underpins flexible networking under various industry and use scenarios. In addition, NB-IoT device and application partners could easily get access to the solution, enabling business innovation and scenario-based customization.

“We are very honored to have reached this agreement with Telefonica to cooperate on Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT). Huawei's end-to-end Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) solution, including the IoT operating system (Lite OS), device chipset, network access solutions, and IoT platforms, enables Telefonica to unlock new business opportunities in areas such as smart metering, smart parking, logistics tracking, and smart cities,” said Patrick Zhang, President, Huawei Marketing and Solutions Department.