AT&T, KPN, Orange and Swisscom enable LTE-M roaming across their networksAT&T, KPN, Orange and Swisscom enable LTE-M roaming across their networks

A consortium on European operators has got together with AT&T to activate LTE-M roaming across North America and Europe.

LTE-M is a low power wireless technology that’s not as low-power as NB-IoT and Lora, but is better than nothing and based on existing tech. Thus it’s a handy first step into IoT for applications that don’t have minimal power consumption as a priority, but it’s still not much good unless the LTE-M modules are free to roam globally.

This is a good step in the right direction as now, if you get some kind of IoT package from one of the operators involved, you can now roam to the US, Mexico, France, Holland and Switzerland to your heart’s content. What you will do if your IoT module happens to find itself anywhere else, however, remains a mystery.

“More and more of our enterprise customers require global capabilities as they deploy IoT devices and applications,” said John Wojewoda, AVP, Global Connections Management, AT&T. “These LTE-M roaming agreements help meet that demand and make it easier for businesses around the world to benefit from the power of a globalized IoT.”

“The introduction of LTE-M creates many new possibilities for our partners, customers and prospects,” said Carolien Nijhuis, Director IoT at KPN. “Roaming with LTE-M has been one of the most requested features by our customers in the market. We are very happy we’re now able to fulfill their needs and unlock their international IoT-potential.”

“Enabling access to roaming on LTE-M for our customers is a clear priority for Orange,”” said Didier Lelièvre, Director mobile wholesale & interconnection, Orange. “We’re proud to be among the first operators to deliver such a roaming capability to our IoT customers and more widely to our partners across this market.”

“After offering the first nationwide LTE-M and NB-IoT networks in Switzerland, we are happy to prove our strong position on roaming and be among the first operators that enhance the key technology LTE-M for 2G replacement with international roaming,” said Julian Dömer, Head of IoT at Swisscom.