BROWSING: Sensors

Global IoT community set for jamboree LoRaWAN event in Paris (Sponsored)

The LoRa Alliance expects over 2,000 delegates in Paris next week (July 6-7) for the LoRaWAN World Expo, billed as its first global jamboree event for the LoRaWAN community, and the wider IoT market beyond. It is set to be, by some margin, the...

Between the lines, Vodafone study asks how to sell to SMEs just trying to “stay afloat”

Whatever Vodafone’s intention when polling 1,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK, and whatever its conclusion from their responses, one thing is also clear: business is hard in this economic climate. What also seems apparent, reading between the lines of Vodafone’s enterprise...

Europe, Asia Pacific lead smart cities index – for connectivity, services, engagement

In order, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Beijing, London, and Seoul ranked as the top five smart cities, or ‘digital cities’, in a new study by Economist Impact. New York, Sydney, Singapore, Washington DC, and Paris rounded out the top 10, meaning Europe and Asia Pacific contributed...

The juggernaut workload and geopolitical tangles to make 5G work for critical industry

Critical Communications World (CCW) in Vienna this week (June 20-23) told the now-familiar story of how an influential industrial sector, which has existed in a horizontal tech vacuum until now, is coming to terms with its future as an extreme vertical in a broader...

More network, more devices – LoRaWAN is more ‘massive’ on every score, says LoRa Alliance

To get the juices going, on all sides of the IoT divide, ahead of its jamboree LoRaWAN World Expo event in Paris in two weeks, the LoRa Alliance has issued a statement to declare LoRaWAN better – and bigger, and more ‘massive’ – than...

1NCE doubles NB-IoT coverage with new roaming in Americas, Asia, Europe

Germany-based IoT provider 1NCE has said it has doubled its NB-IoT footprint with expansion into Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Norway, the Slovak Republic, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United States. The company claimed it has the “world’s largest NB-IoT coverage map, available at a single...

Flight of the navigator – the Airbus quest to build, run its own multi-market 5G network

European aviation and aerospace firm Airbus effectively headlined the latest Private Networks Forum (PNF), hosted by RCR Wireless and Enterprise IoT Insights, in May, as the premier (the first, at least) enterprise on the schedule. Fresh from a panel with Intel, Qualcomm, and Telefónica,...

Deutsche Telekom and Telia strike back at anti-operator agenda in private 5G market

Right, let’s see how good my notes are two days later; shortly following a shot-across-the-bows from a top analyst at a London private 5G event (Omdia’s Pablo Tomasi at Private Networks in a 5G World), Sweden-based Telia and Germany-based Deutsche Telekom, on behalf of...

Google makes private 5G play – with Betacom, Boingo, Celona, and others

Google Cloud has followed hyperscale mega-rivals Microsoft and AWS into the private 5G market with a bunch of specialist vendor and channel partners, starting with Betacom, Boingo Wireless, Celona, Crown Castle, and Kajeet. It said it is offering “turn-key” private 5G with the option...

Operators advised to start again with private 5G in spectrum markets they still control

More operator-bashing this morning at a two-day Informa event in London (Private Networks in a 5G World, June 14 and 15); the opportunity to take cellular into enterprise premises is “fading away” from them, remarked Pablo Tomasi, principal analyst at Omdia, kicking-off the conference...

Integration, simplification, multiplication – three signs private 5G has come of age

This is a rehash (and extension, in the end) of a previous post, to an extent; but it distils the message from before, and says there are sure signs, at last, that the private cellular market, covering localised installations of enterprise-geared 5G, nominally, has...

Edzcom, Signify to build private smart-city network on 5G lightpoles in Finland

Finland-based Edzcom and Netherlands-based Signify have entered a partnership to build a private smart-city 5G and IoT network using street-lighting and other road infrastructure for the city of Tampere, in Finland. The network, which is to be deployed and densified in quick-time by Edzcom...

Siemens buys UK industrial IoT firm Senseye for global smart factory push

Siemens has acquired UK-based industrial IoT firm Senseye for an undisclosed fee. Senseye, founded in 2014, provides analytics-based (“AI-powered”) predictive maintenance solutions for industrial machines, offering ways to manage and reduce unplanned downtime and to boost productivity and sustainability. The firm, headquartered in Southampton, was...

Softbank takes equity stake in 1NCE – as “only company that can deliver global IoT”

Global cellular IoT provider 1NCE has confirmed a long-trailed deal with Softbank, a major investor already in the firm, to release equity to the Japan-based carrier in return for exclusive distribution rights in Asia Pacific. Softbank will sell 1NCE in 19 markets in the...

Nokia and Edzcom/Cellnex renew private 5G vows, hit the Industry 4.0 trail in Europe

It is a partnership of industrial-minded telco country-mates that effectively helped to build the early private LTE and 5G market, with joint references in a number of key installations in Europe over the last five years, notably in the ports and mining sectors; now...

Astrocast to buy Dutch IoT scale-up Hiber, raise further funds for satellite network

Consolidation in the satellite IoT space, already, and again; Swiss satellite IoT operator Astrocast has agreed a deal to acquire busy Dutch industrial IoT scale-up Hiber. Astrocast, with a network of 12 nanosatellites as it stands, has a stated plan to have 20 in...

Critical and complementary – setting the record straight on 5G and Wi-Fi

Time to set the record straight on cellular 5G and Wi-Fi 6/7, a panel of Industry 4.0 luminaries suggested at Private Networks Forum (PNF) a couple of weeks back; these technologies are not, and never will be, mutually exclusive, it implied. They will not...

Athonet targets financial services sector with private 5G lab in London’s Square Mile

Private cellular network specialist Athonet has opened a 5G lab in the heart of London’s financial district dedicated to the financial-tech (fintech) scene. The initiative signals the Italy-based firm’s decision to move in earnest into the finance sector, by offering private 5G as a...

New Sigfox parent claims million-milestone and ready-supply for Sigfox 2.0 (‘Unabiz 0G’)

The first shot of blue sky in the murky Sigfox firmament? Maybe, just – even despite mutterings of discontent from the old guard and warnings of difficulty for the new regime. A press announcement, proclaiming the “first one-millionth” Sigfox tracker for European postal services,...

‘We’re doing the exact same thing:’ John Deere on applying farming strategy to manufacturing

John Deere’s precision agriculture strategy was developed more than 10 years ago, and as a testament to its belief that farming is just outdoor manufacturing, the company is using what it’s learned from this success to improve and optimize its own internal manufacturing processes....

Nokia integrates Azure Arc into MXIE bundle for mission-critical Industry 4.0

Nokia is to integrate Microsoft’s Azure Arc cloud management platform into its MX Industrial Edge (MXIE) solution for mission-critical Industry 4.0 environments. The tie-up will afford customers buying private wireless and edge computing from Nokia a way to also manage Azure workloads, in any...

Betacom taps Airspan, Druid for private 5G install at US Manufacturing Institute

Betacom is working with Airspan Networks and Druid Software, a familiar pairing for private RAN and core, to deliver a pirate 5G network in the CBRS band for the Digital Manufacturing Institute and National Center for Cybersecurity in Manufacturing (MxD) in the US. The...

BT to invest £100m to put UK enterprises in ‘digital fast lane’ and ‘soup-up security’

UK telecoms group BT has revealed a ‘charter’ to invest almost £100 million over the next three years in its new Division X digital change unit, which is at the heart of its broader strategy to establish itself as a ‘tech-co’ (“not a telco”),...

Ericsson (also) signs with T-Mobile to offer private 5G to US enterprise customers

Weird, and frustrating; Swedish vendor Ericsson has issued a press release, the day after Nordic rival Nokia, about a new working relationship with T-Mobile in the US on private 5G. It is the same press release, just with a different vendor attached, just as...