u-blox AG, has become the first company to get a product certified under Global Certification Forum’s (GCF) new IoT Chipset Certification program that started in January 2020. This latest GCF program is designed for chipsets covering NB-IoT and LTE-M and facilitates the easy integration of embedded chipsets into modules and devices. The u-blox UBX-R5 Cat-M1 chipset became the first product to achieve certification under this new scheme.
GCF IoT Chipset Certification was added to the existing IoT platforms and IoT modules program at the beginning of the year, to enable certification of chipsets based on GCF approved test platforms under defined quality requirements, including GCF approval of the chipset manufacturer’s design test facilities. This gives the IoT industry a new level of confidence when deploying and integrating a myriad of different devices across multiple communication technologies and is the first in a number of initiatives which will be launched by GCF in 2020 to enable the confidence and growth of the IoT market.
The u-blox UBX-R5 is a 5G-ready, multi-band LTE-M / NB-IoT chipset that provides industry-leading hardware-based security to a wide range of low-power wide-area (LPWA) IoT devices. It includes the first Common Criteria (CC) EAL5+ High certified IoT Secure Element with a hardware Root of Trust, enabling the strongest protection against attacks on mission-critical IoT assets or devices that transmit sensitive information.
With the rapid expansion of the IoT industry, the introduction of a program that demonstrates industry-recognized compliance with 3GPP standards is critical to ensuring the sustained successful deployment of the IoT industry. This is particularly important for mission-critical or long life-cycle IoT applications that the u-blox UBX-R5 is intended for, also helping to shorten time-to-market and significantly reduce costs.
