The slow creep of LPWAN (low power wide area network) expansion is continuing, with the two main camps announcing new national installations. Sigfox has signed up Thinxtra as a Sigfox Network Operator (SNO) in Australia and New Zealand, and also announced its first Middle Eastern success in Oman. Meanwhile, Actility, one of the leading adopters of rival system LoRa, has announced a partnership with Ceske Radiokomunikace to deploy a major trial network in the Czech Republic. As an SNO, Thinxtra will be building out the Sigfox infrastructure down under, buying base stations from the French LPWAN vendor in exchange for a proportion of the revenue generated by the devices that use the low-power network. With the expansion into Australia and New Zealand, Sigfox will be looking to add more devices to its global private network. Sigfox currently manages upwards of 7m devices in 14 countries, although that number hasn’t been updated in a while. Once the groundwork for a country is laid, the ability to quickly add devices to the network means that the adoption curve can resemble a hockey stick – as long as Sigfox and its SNOs can get businesses to choose Sigfox over rival technologies. To this end, Sigfox has pivoted its strategy to target channel partnerships – moving away from its previous tactic of trying to sell its connectivity directly to customers. It has recently announced deals with Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform, and the Altice group, and there are more announcements in the pipeline. It will be important to achieve critical mass quickly, before the 3GPP alternative, NB-IoT, comes to market. Thinxtra’s VP of ecosystem and marketing, Renald Gallis, told Rethink IoT that Australian telco Telstra had trialed LoRa in Melbourne but had decided to wait on NB-IoT instead, something which is likely to be prevalent among cellular operators which can stick with familiar technology and use existing infrastructure. In addition, Gallis said that Thinxtra had carried out some nine months of due diligence before selecting Sigfox over LoRa or Ingenu. He notes that the Sigfox pipeline is exciting, and that it should allow the company to maintain a 2-3 year advantage in Australia and New Zealand. A number of customers are already in the pipeline, but aren’t public yet, but Kordia is the first confirmed user of Sigfox in the region – reselling Sigfox connections to its existing business telecoms customers, for those looking to expand into the IoT. In Oman, the incumbent operator Omantel is not demonstrating Telstra’s caution about a non-3GPP solution and plans to roll out a national Sigfox network to support business and residential services. The network will cover 85% of the population within 18 months and Omantel plans to launch a wide range of vertical industry solutions on top of it. As for Actility, the French start-up is bringing its ThingPark platform to the Czech Republic, beginning with a deployment in Prague and the 13 largest towns in the country of 10.5m people. In the initial stage of what will be a national roll-out, Actility will be pushing its LoRa-based ThingPark system as the IoT platform of choice – although Sigfox is also part-way through a national program in the country. Actility positions ThingPark as a platform for smart city, smart traffic and connected building requirements. There will be 43 base station radio masts deployed by Ceske Radiokomunikace, which will be added to as the requirement for bandwidth scales. “IoT is an extremely important technology for the future. We can already see great interest from businesses and governments in this revolutionary innovation. IoT is a key element of Ceske Radiokomunikace’s vision and technology roadmap,” said Petr Sichrovský, CCO at the operator. “We selected Actility’s ThingPark because the capability is very well aligned with our needs. Through the ThingPark Wireless OSS (Operations Support System), Ceske Radiokomunikace will be able to monitor our network performance in real time.”
Sigfox, the French global communications manager for over 7m IoT devices across 14 countries and Thinxtra, an IoT network operator, have announced their new strategic partnership for expansion of the Sigfox network to Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East. As an official Sigfox Network Operator (SNO), Thinxtra intends to achieve critical mass quickly before NB-IoT arrives, by buying base stations from the French LPWAN (low power wide area network) vendor in exchange for revenue generated by devices using Sigfox’s low power network. Thinxtra executives suggest that Sigfox’s pipeline system will allow the company to maintain a 2-3 year advantage within Australia and New Zealand. The Australian market is expected to be particularly attractive as it has been identified as one of the most important markets for future growth opportunities with potential for significant cost savings through lower capital costs and greater adoption