Narrowband IoT or NB-IoT is a wireless communication standard for the Internet of Things (IoT). NB-IoT belongs to the category of low-power wide-area networks (LPWAN), enabling to connect devices that need small amounts of data, low bandwidth, and long battery life. NB-IoT (Narrowband-IoT) is a narrowband radio technology for M2M and Internet of Things (IoT) devices and applications requiring wireless transmission over a more extended range at a relatively low cost and using little power for long battery lives.

In NB-IoT applications, typically small data volume amounts need to be infrequently transmitted. NB-IoT became a standard for this type of wireless communications in 2016, and in recent years mobile operators have been, and many still are deploying network capabilities enabling narrowband-IoT coverage for their customers. NB-IoT falls under the category of LPWA network standards and protocols (LPWAN). That’s the name used for many types of wireless IoT communication standards in the IoT stack that enable to use devices with batteries for transmission over a wide area (wide area network or WAN, in this case WWAN or wireless WAN) with relatively low power (hence the ‘LP’) for infrequent, mainly small data volume, transmissions.