NB IoT, nRF9160 SiP. sim card/antenna?

[Chirag Panchal]

Hi,

is nRF9160 SiP comes with eSIM? or do I need to insert external SIM in socket which is traditional method?

Do I need to external chip antenna? does that antenna is same for NB-IoT and GPS ? or I need to connect two different antenna?

[Carl Richard]

Hi!

I don't know about the nRF9160 SiP alone, but the nRF9160 DK comes with an iBasis SIM card to be inserted in a socket on the board. There is also support for eSIM, but it requires an extra component. Take a look here. 

When it comes to antennas; the DK uses separate antennas for LTE and GPS, but I don't know whether that is required or not. 

Note that the DK has support for alternative, external antennas as well. 

I recommend that you take a look at the documentation for nRF9160 and its DK here.

[Chirag Panchal]

thanks a lot Carl,

One last question may be that could be for sales representative - if you could answer will be beneficial for me. I am from India, do you know any near future possibility to use NB IoT in India - Vodafone / Jio ? which companies offers NB-IoT sim cards in your country ?

[Carl Richard]

No problem!

I don't know too much about about deployment status of NB IoT in India, but from what I could find there will be an effort to provide it nationally during 2019/2020. 

From what I know only Telia and Telenor provides NB-IoT in Norway.

[Amanda Hsieh]

Hi, 

Based on iBasis network coverage it does not mention India, or more importantly that LTE-M or NB-IoT support has not yet been deployed in India: https://www.gsma.com/iot/deployment-map/

So when using the iBasis SIM in your smartphone it was using another technology than LTE-M/NB-IoT to communicate.

-Amanda H.