Telefónica Deutschland has introduced a prepaid tariff to make IoT connectivity more affordable for a broad market.

The NB-IoT offering is available across the entire Telefónica Deutschland mobile network.

Said to be cheaper than comparable tariffs, the O₂ Business Easy IoT prepaid tariff can make battery-powered long-life sensor networking economically attractive for businesses with price differences of up to 250 per cent.

“I am convinced that our new O₂ Business Easy IoT prepaid tariff portfolio makes infrastructure sensor networking extremely attractive for companies due to a simple tariff structure and an outstanding price-performance ratio,” said Karsten Pradel, B2B director at Telefónica Deutschland. “Combining a fully available NB-IoT machine network with the new IoT prepaid tariff, we are giving the growing massive IoT market in Germany a major boost and are significantly driving digitalisation for the benefit of business and society.”

The tariff complements the already well-known IoT Connect tariff. O₂ Business Easy IoT provides companies with an easy-to-administer tariff that is designed for IoT applications with low data transmission requirements and long usage periods.

Target application include consumption data collection for water, heating or gas, condition monitoring for air quality, or status messages for parking space occupancy or fill level in garbage containers to intelligent early warning systems that measure water levels or water damage in buildings.

Thanks to the predefined price-performance structure and simple handling, the networking of battery-powered sensors with O₂ Business Easy IoT is economically calculable in advance and technologically easily scalable.

The offering focuses on the essentials for simple networking of IoT sensors and devices. Depending on the selected tariff, users receive a data package for a one-time fee of €10 per SIM card, which they can use flexibly over a period of ten years. The data volume is usually sufficient for the entire lifetime of the device.

There are three rate plans: Easy IoT World with 750Mbyte; Easy IoT EU+UK with 1000Mbyte; and Easy IoT Germany with 1500Myte.

The model supports 2G, 4G, NB-IoT and, from December 2021, LTE-M to connect a wide range of IoT devices. The prepaid advantages such as one-time payment, no monthly basic fee and no administrative efforts such as individual invoice bookings make handling and planning easier for companies. Data packages can be rebooked online for €10 per SIM card if required, in case the purchased data volume is used up before the device lifetime expires.