Telstra will be the exclusive Telco distributor for the open source board in Australia
Australia’s leading telecommunications and technology company, Telstrawill sell the Arduino’s board with an M2M Telstra SIM, which supports both Telstra’s Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) and LTE Cat M1 networks. According to Telstra, the product will be available in early 2019 from its online developer portal.
Arduino MKR NB 1500 IoT developer board
The board has an SAMD21 Cortex-M0+ 32-bit, low power ARM MCU. It’s a new standard Narrow Band IoT with the ease of use of the Arduino ecosystem. The Arduino’s board is fully compatible with the Narrow Band IoT NB classes and LTE CAT M1 networks.
Telstra’s Chief Technology Officer, Håkan Eriksson, wrote in a blog entry, “As Arduino’s exclusive telco partner in Australia, our alliance integrates Telstra’s Cat M1 and NB-IoT network investments with Arduino’s world leading ecosystem to connect developers, startups, students and experimenters in creation and exploration of IoT innovations.”
Further, he added, “Our partnership with Arduino brings to life hardware that enables quicker and simpler onboarding of devices; paired with our IoT connectivity and reach, you can now build and embed sensors to enable devices to collect, send and even act autonomously on data they acquire from their surrounding environments or one another. From asset tracking and management, environment monitoring, vehicle fleet management and connected spaces, we can help improve efficiency, productivity and security to drive business innovation.”
Telstra’s Network Range across Australia
In Australia, Telstra provides 17.7 million retail mobile services, 4.9 million retail fixed voice services and 3.6 million retail fixed broadband services. Its Cat M1 network covers 3 million square kilometers. Earlier this year, the company announced that it had begun rolling out NB-IoT across prime Australian cities and a number of regional towns. That network covers more than 3.5 million square kilometres.
In August, Telstra presented details of a collection of new location services aimed at consumers, SMBs and enterprises. Telstra’s major rival, Vodafone also offers NB-IoT support in some areas, but does not support Cat M1.
