The term “latency” relates to one-way, downlink or uplink communication. It does not include the time needed to establish a connection between the server and the device. If the device is in power saving mode, it will only receive or send data after it wakes up. According to measurements on current test setups with pre-commercial radio modules, data transmissions typically exhibit a latency of less than a second. In scenarios involving deployments in poor coverage areas, latency may increase up to 7-10 seconds. That said, NB-IoT technology is continuously being enhanced, so current figures are expected to improve with successive releases of the specification.

NB-IoT supports bidirectional communication, but the more common direction is uplink transmission. Only half-duplex is supported, i.e. uplink and downlink don’t take part simultaneously. UL peak rate up to 230 kbps DL peak rate up to 250 kbps Please note that these are not the datarates meanwhile. Current datarates are maximum 20Kbps UL/DL due to single tone transmission.