Source: m2mnow.biz, 17/07/2015
Low-power, WAN options address two key
obstacles to IoT adoption
The global epicenter of low-power, wide-area connectivity saw a lot of action last week with
the LoRa Alliance’s second membership meeting starting Thursday in Paris. Why call France
the epicenter of this important new technology for the Internet of things? Take a look at recent
events:
French startup Actility just secured $25 million in its current round of funding not long after
another French contender, SIGFOX, closed on its latest round, including investment from
Samsung. In that deal, the Korean tech giant adds SIGFOX as a partner and will equip its
ARTIK developer kit with SIGFOX-enabled hardware chips, compatible with the SIGFOX
ultra-narrow band low power wide area network.
Actility, which was founded in 2010, and its main platform, Thingpark, operates on a
LoRaWAN-based network meant to provide low-cost connectivity to low-power devices. The
Thingpark platform, which provides two-way communication and enhanced capacity over
ultra-narrow band communications, is ideal for smart energy management, smart agriculture,
smart cities, manufacturing, remote home monitoring and control, as well as smart building
projects. It utilizes a long-range bi-directional low power network that provides optimized
radio coverage, connects to apps or to the Thingpark Cloud, and can customize SLAs for
specified vertical applications.
Actility’s round closed this month with help from some large players, such as France’s
Orange, Foxconn and Swisscom. This is especially interesting for Foxconn and Orange, as
both companies are pushing to enter the IoT space pretty heavily.
Orange, like other carriers looking forward to finding a foothold within the growing IoT
marketplace, both in and outside Europe, the move demonstrates a desire to get more into the
development of IoT services — potentially moving beyond pure network provision to systems
integration as well. Orange’s Deputy CEO, Pierre Louette, recently told TechCrunch that
Actility’s approach to IoT and its network, “clearly corresponds to the ambition of Orange
Digital Ventures to invest in actors that are developing innovative digital services
that…answer the changing desires and needs of our customers.”
In fact, it was Bouygues Telecom, another French company, who rolled out the world’s first
LoRaWAN-based IoT network this past spring. And with 1/3 of sponsor members and nearly
1/3 of total members headquartered in France, it is no wonder the Alliance has chosen Paris
for last week’s meeting.
Innovative low-power, wide-area network options generating a lot of buzz within the IoT
markets in large part due to their ability to address two key obstacles to IoT adoption to date:
power management and cost. Compared to cellular networks, the latest technology coming
out of France and elsewhere (particular nods to Cambridge, U.K., the Nordics, Germany and
the U.S.) cost pennies on the dollar both to deploy and to operate. Moreover, for certain
applications like utilities, devices must be able to operate on a single charge for years at a
time — a function previously unattainable. Plus, they offer the uniquely secure opportunity
for large enterprises to affordably deploy their own private networks for critical sites like oil
refineries, high-value IP manufacturing facilities and the like, which are both more costly and
less easily controlled and managed using public infrastructure. All of which will become even
more important as more cities become “smart” and need to establish connected infrastructure
quickly, securely and efficiently.
By James Brehm, founder and Chief Technology Evangelist of James Brehm & Associates
James Brehm, founder and Chief Technology Evangelist of James Brehm & Associates – a
market advisory and consultancy focused on Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technologies and
the Internet of Things (IoT), is a regular speaker at industry conferences and one of the
leading voices in IoT and M2M today