BROWSING: Smart Cities

Telekom Srbija (Telekom Serbia) is rolling out a new NB-IoT network to go alongside its public LoRaWAN network, to serve the country’s industrial firms, energy providers, cities and municipalities, and retail and facilities operators. France-based low-power wide-area (LPWA) network specialist Actility, an important vendor...

Note, this article follows directly from a previous post (January 24) – about why logistics is the hardest industry of all for the IoT market to crack; both are taken from a new editorial report on the state of IoT in the supply chain...

The number of 5G-based IoT connections, deployed for higher-performance machines, will reach 116 million globally by 2026, reckons market research firm Juniper Research. The forecast represents a big jump on current numbers, with just 17 million IoT sensors so far (early 2023) running on...

US private cellular Ondas Holdings has completed the acquisition of Israeli drone system and platform developer Airobotics through a merger acquisition, in a deal worth $15.2 million. The new drone unit is to be combined with American Robotics, acquired by Ondas Holdings for $70.6...

Norway has opened up 400 MHz of prime mid-band spectrum, at 3.8-4.2 GHz, for enterprises to deploy local-area private 5G networks. Following pilots last year, the Norwegian Communications Authority (Nkom) is now offering four different-sized tranches of the 3.8-4.2 GHz band on 10-year deals....

A quick excerpt from a panel session at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, courtesy of José María Álvarez-Pallete, chairman and chief executive at Telefónica, who directly and powerfully addressed the elephant in the elite Alpine conference rooms: that unfettered digital change...

The second best thing to making a full-circle pivot to zero emission is to reduce your current footprint – with miles that are not driven, flights that are not taken, and energy that is not consumed. Indeed, while we transition to a completely emission-neutral...

Comcast and Celona have deployed a private 4G/5G network using the CBRS band at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa, California. The network has already provided support for back-of-house operations at a number of events, including the annual Sonoma County Fair last August....

US firm Semtech has concluded its acquisition of Canada’s Sierra Wireless for $1.2 billion, nearly doubling its annual revenue. The deal, announced in August last year, brings together Semtech’s LoRa/LoRaWAN property, enabling non-cellular low-power wide-area (LPWA) IoT in unlicensed spectrum, with Sierra Wireless’ well-established...

Massive IoT – or massive machine-type communications (mMTC) – is all around us. We live in a vast connected ecosystem of data-gathering applications that draw on comparatively low levels of data at source but which, when aggregated by application vendor or enterprise user, is...

The latest edition of ABI Research’s likeable annual tech predictions about what will fly in the year ahead, and what will splutter on the runway and return to the shed, has come up with a couple of interesting counterpoints in the massive IoT saga....

Danish shipping company A.P. Moller - Maersk (Maersk) has announced new smart logistics and warehouse facilities in China, Norway, and Pakistan. Each site puts focus on innovation and environmental sustainability. Maersk has also confirmed the acquisition of Danish project logistics specialist Martin Bencher Group...

Ericsson has added a new IT-focused private cellular offering from US-based subsidiary Cradlepoint, acquired in late 2020, into its private 5G portfolio. Cradlepoint’s NetCloud Private Networks solution is said to be tailored to the needs of “lean IT-oriented enterprises”, including in the logistics, light...

As promised and previewed last week, here is a full transcript of the interview with Marc Overton, managing director of BT’s industrial go-to-market business Division X – from a conversation a couple of months back, at the UK operator’s annual Robotics Festival at its...

A new survey by global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company says robotics and automation systems will account for 25 percent of capital spending by industrial companies over the next five years, mostly for routine manual tasks in the logistics and fulfillment, retail and...

European countries are now required to jointly develop and measure progress on digital skills, digital infrastructure, and digitalisation of both private industry and public services. A new ‘monitoring and cooperation’ mechanism obliges EU member states to collaborate on the development, implementation, and measurement of...

The global market for wide-area RTA trackers, comprising low-power IoT trackers attached to returnable transport assets (RTAs) like multi-usage crates and containers, will reach 117.3 million connections by 2027, according to analyst house ABI Research. The projected rise is spurred mostly by the increasing...

Digital transformation of supply chains has solidified as a boardroom topic over the past 12 months. While this drive for industrial change can be attributed to international developments, it is also true that many companies now clearly see the benefits of adopting new digital...

The benefits of machine learning have been abundantly clear for decades, but perhaps nowhere more so than in the field of medicine. With physics-based simulations, 3D modeling, and machine learning methods, medical professionals and researchers have made significant strides in numerous specialties. While there...

There is a clear dichotomy in the cellular IoT market – high-throughput and high-power IoT applications powered by advanced 4G (LTE) and 5G at one end, and low-throughput and low-power applications powered by cellular IoT technologies like NB-IoT and LTE-M at the other. And...

Tech Mahindra will leverage its expertise in next-generation technologies such as 5G, Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), to help Tagawa become a smart city   Indian company Tech Mahindra and Tagawa City in Japan have signed a Memorandum of Understanding...

Japan-based plumbing manufacturer TOTO is using LoRaWAN to connect and manage restroom facilities in airports, stadiums, hotels, and office buildings in the US. It is working with Comcast-owned MachineQ to connect its portfolio of ECOPOWER flush valves in toilets and urinals, as well as...

Contrary to the popular narrative among new telco upstarts that traditional mobile operators will be left behind in the Industry 4.0 race – on the grounds they are entrenched and parochial, geared for box-shifting and hobbled by local assets – UK-based BT says the...

Data is vital for monitoring the environment to improve the way increasingly scarce resources are used. The ability to monitor the systems that manage those resources anywhere on the globe is also vital, but it can be a challenge. Cellular 3G and 4G technologies...