Deutsche Telekom said a team of close to ten experts will work at a new NB-IoT laboratory established with the Fraunhofer-Institute for Material Flow and Logistics.

The Telekom Open IoT Lab, which was inaugurated today (21 November), will see up to six Fraunhofer scientists collaborate with a trio of Deutsche Telekom IoT specialists to develop and test systems aimed at the manufacturing, logistics and aviation industries for commercial launch. In addition to the in-house team, Deutsche Telekom stated the facility will be open to external companies seeking to develop application-specific IoT prototypes.

In a statement, the operator said the lab will focus on NB-IoT technology, which is one of three 3GPP-standardised low power wide area (LPWA) cellular IoT technologies alongside LTE-M and EC-GSM-IoT. Deutsche Telekom explained NB-IoT is well suited to the industries initially targeted by the facility.

“With IoT solutions, companies will be able to achieve high added value, in the short term, in a number of business processes,” Anette Bronder, head of the Digital- and Security Department at Deutsche Telekom, explained.

Telekom Open IoT Lab “will not be pursuing basic research”, Bronder added, explaining it will focus on offering companies “specific benefits by solving their problems using IoT”.

Deutsche Telekom began offering NB-IoT connectivity packages in Germany and the Netherlands in June, as part of a goal to deploy the technology throughout its European footprint by the year-end.

In its announcement, the operator revealed NB-IoT is available throughout Germany and the Netherlands, with deployments ongoing in Austria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.