This will be India’s first NB-IoT service with a fall-back option to ensure continuous connectivity

New Delhi, April 24, 2023: Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), one of India’s leading telecommunications services providers, today, announced its partnership with Secure Meters for deploying Narrow Band (NB-IoT) services that will power 1.3 million homes in Bihar through a smart meter solution. This deployment will be India’s first NB-IoT solution on a narrow band with a fall-back option that will work on 2G and 4G and ensure real-time connectivity and uninterrupted transfer of critical data.

NB-IoT is a low-power, wide area, radio network technology developed by 3GPP which enables a wide variety of IoT devices and services including smart meters.

Ajay Chitkara, Director and CEO, Airtel Business, commenting on this venture, said, “IoT is one of the fastest-growing business segments for Airtel Business. This venture into NB-IoT strengthens our credentials as the largest cellular IoT player in the country and places us firmly as a partner of choice for Discoms looking to invest in smart meters. We look forward to being an active player in India’s energy transition.”

Ananya Singhal, Joint MD ─ Secure Meters, said, “We are thrilled to have partnered with Airtel for the implementation of NB-IoT services in our smart meter rollout in North Bihar. Their expertise, professionalism and dedication to providing top-notch services ensured we learnt together and had a successful launch. With Airtel’s support, we were able to seamlessly connect and monitor our meters, resulting in greater efficiency and cost savings for Secure and for our customers in North Bihar. We thank Bihar Discom management and staff for enabling us to work together. We highly recommend Airtel to anyone looking to implement NB-IoT services in their IoT solutions and look forward to a growing partnership.”

Airtel’s NB-IoT platform is future-ready and is scalable to 5G. Airtel’s NB-IoT proposition also includes its advanced IoT platform ‘The Airtel IoT Hub’ which has been customised to suit the needs of Advance Metering Infrastructure Service Providers (AMISPs). Its Enterprise grade Feasibility Tool helps AMISPs plan their meter deployments better. Other functionalities include customer life cycle management and advanced analytics tools like diagnostics, live sessions check, and real-time data usage among others.

Airtel’s network is ready for pan India NB-IoT deployment. It is designed for superior coverage to address the specific needs of the IoT market.

About Bharti Airtel:

Headquartered in India, Airtel is a global communications solutions provider with over 500 Mn customers in 17 countries across South Asia and Africa. The company ranks amongst the top three mobile operators globally and its networks cover over two billion people. Airtel is India’s largest integrated communications solutions provider and the second-largest mobile operator in Africa. Airtel’s retail portfolio includes high-speed 4G/5G mobile broadband and Airtel Xstream Fiber that promises speeds up to 1 Gbps with convergence across linear and on-demand entertainment, streaming services spanning music and video, digital payments and financial services. For enterprise customers, Airtel offers a gamut of solutions that includes secure connectivity, cloud and data centre services, cyber security, IoT, Ad Tech and CPaaS (Airtel IQ). For more details visit www.airtel.com

About Secure Meters:

Secure is a multi-national corporation committed to providing revenue management, power quality and energy efficiency to its customers and communities, enabling them to save money, reduce energy consumption and facilitate comfortable living. Since delivering India's first commercially viable electronic energy meter in 1987, Secure today employs 6500 people worldwide, with offices in Australia, Bangladesh, India, Italy, Malaysia, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, UAE, and the United Kingdom, and deploys products in more than 60 countries. Secure Meters also offers metering, billing and collection services for electricity and gas, energy efficiency monitoring, older care products, and many other solutions and services.