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I found a comment on a blog post stating that NB-IoT doesn't support roaming:

nbiot do not support roaming (you must have sim from the operator that have the infrastructure). nbiot also lacks support for handover (you can not maintain connection while moving out of range of cell A and into range of cell B.

in short, NBIoT (LTE NB1) is a mobile standard for stationary objects.

if you want roaming and handover you have to go with LTE Cat m1 (not to be confused with LTE Cat 1) or wait for LTE NB2.

I wasn't able to correlate this informations with other sources. Is this statement true? Is this a technical limitation due to the specification/implementation?

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DurandA
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If you use your favorite search engine and search for terms like "nb iot roaming" you'll find plenty of other pages backing this.

I'd interpret this (2017) document from the GSMA in a way that it says "NB IoT specifations have been written very quickly, Roaming might be added later" https://www.gsma.com/iot/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/CLP.28-v1.0.pdf

This source https://1ot.mobi/blog/the-state-of-roaming-narrowband-iot-lte-cat-m1 says

There is a small beam of light indeed. Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone completed the first successful NB-IoT Roaming trial this summer. (this seems to have been carried out in 2018)

To answer your question: Yes this seems to be (have been) a technical limitations per specification, but people are working on it.

aslmx
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