I recently had the pleasure of attending a two-day Hackathon at the Vodafone/Huawei (the world’s first) Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) open lab. The event was centred around the practical application of NB-IoT and how to leverage the technology to attain the somewhat figurative holy grail of battery performance for IoT devices – ten year plus battery life. Now, I am well aware that NB-IoT is more buzz word than anything else at the moment so let’s talk about what it actually is and its relevance given the state of IoT today before discussing the specific features of the technology that help to minimise power consumption.