nRF9160/nRF9160-DK Firmware for Australian Region.

[MBB]

Regarding the nRF9610 and the nRF9610 DK.

Am interested in developing a use for the Australian region (ACMA/RCM compliance) and have already worked on CAT-M1 devices for this region.

A national operator, Telstra, has national coverage and uses Band 28 for CAT-M1.

My question is - is there a firmware/flash update required to have the nRF9610 DK work for this region? Am also looking at NB-IoT (which is also implemented by Vodafone), but our first requirement is an established, low power, working platform. Other devices we have used did have parameter/firmware requirements for our (Telstra) region.

[Sigurd]

Hi,

You don’t need a specific modem firmware for that region, but you need a modem firmware version that have support for the band that you are using. I.e. since you are using band 28, you need a modem firmware version that supports band 28.

Luckily, we released a new version of the modem firmware this week that have support for band 28! This is modem firmware “mfw_nrf9160_0.7.0-15.alpha”.

If you already have gotten a nRF9160-DK, then it is likely using an older modem firmware version, and in that case you would need to update to “mfw_nrf9160_0.7.0-15.alpha”. You can dowload it from here. Instructions on how to update is included in the zip file.

In the future, new nRF9160-DKs will be shipped with this(or newer) updated modem firmware version.

[MBB]

Thanks for your reply, Good to know firmware support for band 28. Only concern would be Telstra specifics for Band 28. Other device used previously had problems and had to modify frequencies used in Band 28 to work on Telstra - not sure if that device's initial Band 28 support was set-up correctly (!?). Interested to know if any other nRF9160-DK users have success with Telstra and any issues encountered. After last experience I'd prefer to start using Dev Platform which can successfully join network rather than start using platform by working out how to get connected to network (which requires us to question power supply/cables/modem/carrier/location/antenna/commands/etc/etc)

[Will Lizardo]

Hi,

We are Australia/New Zealand distributors for Nordic, and we have a pleasant experience with the NRF9160 IC and SW development for it. If you need some assistance, let me know. ([email protected])