In this exclusive interview, IoT Business News sits down with Steven Baker, Chief Product Officer at KORE*, to discuss the company’s groundbreaking achievements, recent technological advancements, and strategic initiatives in the rapidly evolving Internet of Things (IoT) landscape.

From the acquisition of Twilio’s IoT connectivity business to the development of cutting-edge eUICC technology, Steven provides insights into how KORE is positioning itself as a leader in the market. He also shares success stories, highlights partnerships, and outlines the company’s future plans, offering a comprehensive overview of KORE’s vision and impact in the IoT space.

IoT Business News: Can you elaborate on KORE’s most significant achievements in the IoT space over the past year and how these have positioned the company in the market?

Steven Baker: The acquisition of Twilio’s IoT connectivity business unit has brought KORE an unparalleled combination of carrier IMSI and eUICC product capability. It has also positioned KORE with a highly scalable route to market with a self-service, developer-centric model enabling KORE to capitalize on the OEM drive for built-in connectivity during the manufacturing process.

Over the last year KORE has also launched the Pre-configured Solutions (PCS) business unit focused on delivering high-value IoT enablement services incorporating connectivity, hardware, and managed services into pre-configured bundles that reduce the complexity of deploying IoT applications.

KORE has also reached over 19 million IoT subscriptions in service making KORE one of the largest IoT MVNOs in the world.

What are the latest technological advancements that KORE has integrated into its IoT solutions? How are these innovations enhancing your offerings compared to your competitors?

One of the most recent technological advancements KORE has released is an eUICC technology called the Local Profile Management Applet. The KORE LPM Applet enables a host CPU to manage previously downloaded eSIM profiles locally using AT commands. This capability can be used to implement device-initiated fallback, device-initiated failover, resiliency, and similar advanced capabilities. The LPM applet combines the simplicity and reliability of M2M orchestration with the flexibility and power of local profile management, in a manner that’s forward-compatible with the SGP32 IoT standard. The applet interface is based on the SGP22 ES10 standard ensuring developers who use it get to keep their investment as they eventually migrate to SGP22 and SGP32 solutions.

Could you share a recent customer success story that highlights the effectiveness of KORE’s IoT solutions in transforming their business operations?

A key element of KORE’s ability to positively impact our customer’s business operations is through our multi-country, managed service and logistics solutions. KORE has a long history serving Healthcare OEMs and DMEs with critical healthcare logistics solutions. Recently, two KORE customers in this space experienced a 40% reduction in annualized new inventory spend by leveraging KORE’s reverse logistics, sanatization, and redeployment of pre-used equipment including custom device configuration enabling a single device to support multiple business lines.

With increasing concerns around IoT security, what steps has KORE taken to enhance the security features of its solutions?

KORE’s eSIM technology includes support for IoT SAFE. IoT SAFE establishes the SIM as the ‘Root of Trust’ to enable chip-to-cloud security. This technology can be configured during SIM manufacturing making it both scalable and simple to leverage using standard (D)TLS standards. It obviates the need for post manufacturing device provisioning which can be difficult to both provision and maintain when requiring periodic security updates over time.

How do partnerships shape KORE’s strategy in expanding its IoT solutions? Are there any recent or upcoming collaborations that we should be aware of?

KORE’s partner portfolio spans 30+ MNOs worldwide as well as many professional and managed service providers. These partnerships enable KORE to pull together nearly any combination of connectivity, hardware, and service to solve IoT challenges. KORE also has strong relationships with multiple cloud providers including most recently with Google. Recently, KORE also added partners with multiple third-party service providers to augment our manual and professional service portfolio to enable our vertically focused pre-configured solutions.

What markets does KORE plan to target in the near future? Are there new industries or regions where you see significant growth opportunities for your IoT solutions?

From a regional perspective, KORE has traditionally had a significant presence in North America and has been growing in the UK and EU with localized sales, logistics, and support teams. KORE’s carrier partner ecosystem is expanding in 2024 enabling KORE to focus more on the APAC region, and more specifically China.

From a vertical market perspective, KORE’s current PCS solutions target 3 vertical areas including enterprise Fixed Wireless (FW), Connected Health, and Fleet Management. These solutions are deployed throughout North America and are expanding into the UK, Europe, and Latin America in the coming months. KORE is also currently trialing an Industrial pre-configured solution.

How is KORE leveraging its IoT technology to promote sustainability within its operations and among its clients? Are there specific initiatives or projects that exemplify this approach?

KORE launched an initiative to reduce waste and support sustainability by reducing the size of card bodies in its SIM shipments, which ties into “IoT for Good” – a key initiative here at KORE that leverages innovations in IoT such as SIM and connectivity to enable us to live greener and longer, all while making informed, intelligent use of our global resources. Since the commercial launch of SIM cards three decades ago, approximately 4.5 billion SIM cards are sold and shipped each year industry-wide, accounting for more than 560,000 tons of carbon dioxide and 18,000+ tons of plastic waste annually. While the SIM card has reduced in size over the last three decades, the packaging the card body that holds the SIM has not. The KORE initiative reduces the card body by 50% and, relating to SIM cards, is expected to:

• Reduce shipping costs by 50% due to the weight reduction
• Reduce KORE’s carbon footprint by 16%
• Aid customers in reducing plastic waste by 50%

Looking ahead, what are the next big steps for KORE in terms of product development and market strategies? Are there any upcoming innovations or technologies that you are particularly excited about introducing to the market?

KORE is evolving our eSIM technology to incorporate the SGP.32 (IoT) standard and increasing our coverage footprint with in-country coverage in the APAC region. OEMs worldwide will be seeking ways to leverage iSIM technology to open up new service potential and simplify logistics and provisioning at scale.

KORE also continues to evolve our AI modeling with new initiatives around it for managing IoT real-time operations and logistics analysis and monitoring as well as custom AI solutions for individual use cases requiring intelligent automation at scale.

The post Innovating IoT: An Exclusive Interview with KORE’s Chief Product Officer Steven Baker appeared first on IoT Business News.

A fews weeks ahead of the (Paris – July 6-7, 2022), IoT Business News had the opportunity to interview Donna Moore, CEO of the LoRa Alliance®. In this interview, Donna shares with us the latest developments and dynamics of the LoRaWAN technology in the Covid and post-Covid contexts, as well as the specific focus and ambitions of the soon-to-come LoRaWAN World Expo.

Last year, the LoRaWAN standard experienced its strongest year ever in terms of adoption, deployments, and expanded capabilities. How do you explain such dynamics in the context of global pandemic and chip shortages?

Donna Moore: It is widely recognized that the pandemic massively accelerated digital transformation. First, it increased the awareness and need for IoT, for applications ranging from assuring safety to automating processes to the importance of capturing real-time data to make decisions. Many industries faced questions about how to serve a greater number of people without sacrificing the level of service, all while facing labor and material shortages, as well as logistics and supply issues. This created fear and uncertainty, which all – in turn – significantly accelerated digital transformation in business, government entities (local, state/regional, and national), and the public sector.

LoRaWAN was the best solution to capture this acceleration because of the technology’s ability and readiness to enable IoT. LoRaWAN is an open standard, with the largest ecosystem, and already had millions of successful deployments globally. When the pandemic hit, overall demand increased, and so did the need for solutions “right now,” which further accelerated LoRaWAN’s scaling. Although supply chain and logistics issues remain, the LoRaWAN ecosystem had the ingenuity to solve challenges that Covid brought to light, while continuing to advance the technology in parallel.

Have new applications and use cases emerged for the LoRaWAN technology in relation to the COVID crisis and global health situation?

I would say yes and no. Many of the applications were not necessarily new, but the development time from the initial use case to the deployed product was significantly accelerated. LoRa Alliance members rapidly met the needs of new use cases based on the need for social distancing and safety. Some examples of use cases that emerged or were leveraged to address Covid-related challenges were:

• Providing communications capabilities and repurposing LoRaWAN panic buttons for use as hospital call buttons in makeshift hospitals
• Monitoring air and water quality
• Finding ways to keep employees safe via monitoring and creating six-foot distancing solutions
• Monitoring public restrooms to ensure they were always clean
• Monitoring buildings for cleaning, room usage and contact tracing

It is important to remember that all these use cases had to be performed without any face-to-face interaction. Emerging requirements like these drove LoRaWAN’s growth in multiple vertical markets such as utilities, industry, smart buildings, and smart cities. It also became readily apparent that once a network is set up for an initial application, it is very easy and cost effective to add additional applications and expand into new markets.

The LoRaWAN World Expo will take place in Paris on July 6-7. This global event will include dedicated sessions on environmental sustainability. What were the drivers for this particular focus?

Our vision is to improve the quality of people’s lives and the environment. Sessions dedicated to environmental sustainability are a direct extension of that vision. But more than that, environmental sustainability has become a worldwide necessity, not just a goal, so it is a crucial need to collaborate as a global community to solve these issues.

LoRaWAN is ideally suited for environmental applications because it is low power and long-range, devices can be updated remotely with firmware updates over the air, and gateways and devices are designed to withstand the elements. This allows sensors to be deployed at great distances for long periods without worrying about battery life. In addition, LoRaWAN is the only LPWAN with a variety of network options. Solutions can be deployed on a public, private, satellite, community or hybrid network to empower many applications, even in remote areas.

According to the World Economic Forum’s Internet of Things Guidelines for Sustainability report¹, 84% of IoT deployments currently address, or have the potential to address, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). How does this potential translate into the LoRaWAN ecosystem? Has the Alliance seen significant growth in the number of environmentally and socially responsible projects? Can you give some examples?

LoRa Alliance’s vision to improve quality of life and protect the planet’s resources fully supports the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) and its objectives to strive toward a peaceful and prosperous planet. As the de facto standard for low power wide area networking (LPWAN) connectivity for internet of things (IoT), the LoRaWAN standard is deployed in a wide variety of solutions that support these global goals. In fact, in 2020, the LoRa Alliance launched the “LoRaWAN for Good” initiative supporting the UN’s 17 SDGs. We asked members to submit their deployments, and they enthusiastically responded to show how they are addressing the planet’s needs. This campaign was the beginning of a multi-stage approach to supporting the UN’s SDGs, and we are now evolving this campaign to focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals. We have dedicated a special focus at the LoRaWAN World Expo to this evolution by devoting an entire track to ESG topics.

I am happy to share a sample of deployments that exemplify the LoRa Alliance’s, and its members’, commitment to creating a smarter and safer planet.

• For Water Conservation, LoRaWAN has been integrated into water management systems, smart homes, and buildings to monitor water usage, optimize use to avoid waste, and identify leaks before they become a problem.
• For Sustainable Farming, farmers and ranchers use LoRaWAN to measure environmental conditions that influence crop production and livestock health. This increases efficiency, maximizing yield while minimizing expenses.
• For Flood Monitoring, LoRaWAN is used to monitor rising sea levels, rivers, and streams. Collected data has been vital for alerting officials when there is a high flood risk.
• For Wildlife Protection, LoRaWAN is used to track endangered species and protect them from poachers. Actionable data is analyzed to allow park rangers to follow wildlife movement and monitor park perimeters, ensuring wildlife safety.

The line-up of speakers announced at the Expo includes several representatives from EU commissions and regulatory authorities. Is this a sign that LoRaWAN is now visible and recognized by public authorities as a key technology in the telecom landscape, just like the cellular communication technologies are?

Yes, LoRaWAN’s role in the telecom landscape is growing and increasingly recognized by regulatory authorities, governments, and private businesses alike. The LoRa Alliance actively works with regulatory bodies around the world to educate and ensure access to the license-free spectrum. Our recognition last year by ITU-T as a global networking standard furthered our recognition as an important technology in this landscape. Another example of how our active work with regulatory bodies globally has increased LoRaWAN’s visibility and recognition with regulators is the recent authorizations in Israel and India, which allow for full commercial LoRaWAN deployments. In addition, RFPs and tenders from governmental bodies are increasingly specifying use of certified devices using the LoRaWAN standard, demonstrating LoRaWAN’s increased recognition and value as an industry standard.

How does this edition of the Expo stand with regard to previous shows organized by the Alliance? Is there a change in scale for this new edition to reflect the massive development of the LoRaWAN technology in recent years (in terms of adoption and deployments)? Can you give us some key numbers about this event?

The LoRa Alliance is driving and inspiring digital transformation because of our successful deployments, open and large ecosystem, and technical advantages. We are scaling because once a LoRaWAN network is up and running, additional use cases can easily be added without incurring additional costs. Because we are an open standard, unlimited numbers and types of solutions have been developed by hundreds of different companies, all of which drives scale. Additionally, massive IoT is ushering in an exciting era of opportunity to increase global sustainability, safety, and efficiencies for the planet and its people. Because of these factors, the LoRaWAN World Expo will be the largest global event the LoRa Alliance has ever hosted and its first multi-day event. The Expo evolved into such a large-scale event because of the market’s increasing demand for education, desire to network with the LoRaWAN ecosystem, and need for opportunities to explore new partnerships.

Over 90 speakers from around the globe will participate in over 60 sessions across four content tracks. The exhibition floor will have over 70 booths from members of the LoRaWAN ecosystem, and we will host live demonstrations of LoRaWAN in action. Without question, this is the only official LoRaWAN event and one you cannot afford to miss if you are looking to grow your IoT business. The Expo will be the one opportunity this year where you can learn how to develop, deploy, and partner with other members of the LoRaWAN community – this event is not to be missed!

The post Interview with Donna Moore, CEO of the LoRa Alliance® appeared first on IoT Business News.

During the last Mobile World Congress (2013 edition), we had the opportunity to interview Steve Priestley. Steve tells us how Wyless gets prepared for the future of M2M and shares his vision of the M2M market.

Can you please present Wyless’ offering and key differentiating factors?
S.P: Wyless has been established for around 10 years as an M2M data centric virtual operator. We are proud to be able to bring together 15 operators and more in the future to a single customer and provide them with a unique, single interface to manage all of the connections from any operator globally. We have a single solution that helps enterprises deploy their M2M or IT projects which require multi-countries, multi-zones or multi-regions.
We have started to build some services & supportive structures to enable the bundling of devices and applications to help customers optimize their supply chain also to build and deploy their solutions globally. We are now engaged actively with them in device choice, device configuration, device deployment and we go to an extent where we partner with several installation & maintenance teams globally. This way we can help customers get their solutions to market effectively, not being concerned about some of the complexities of configuration, commissioning. And we bring all that onboard Porthos, which is our managed services platform.

What has been Wyless’ recent developments and achievements on the market?
S.P: Some of our key developments can been split into 2 or 3 layers. Firstly, we have now built significant partnerships with device manufacturers to enable us to understand their world better but also to enable our customers to understand how network & devices work in delivering solutions. Further, we will continue to add more devices support over the next 2-3 years to enable a more complete solution.
Our platform Porthos is now getting to the point where we have a significant number of connections and it’s scaling where the features have been driven out to enable customers to build, maintain and manage their own devices with key API and self-served features that ease the deployment of SIM-based infrastructures.
In other words, we are taking the complexity that MNO provides and turn it into a very seamless simple user interface by which customers can actually manage, activate, suspend, control, report, monitor and maintain all of their connections and tell that to the device itself.
Over the next 12 to 24 months, we will mostly be active in the device management sphere so there isn’t a notion then of unconnected or untethered elements of the solution. Thus, they will be tethered together in a single platform
The third element is that we continue to build out our MNO base. We have actively introduced 3 network operators in the last 6 months and we will continue to build out more network operators in the next 24 months. We are building a local multi-domestic strategy, where we can offer a roamed and a local domestic capability. As M2M isn’t about fleet only, it is about the static devices that need local support. Hence, we are really proud of the fact that we are building a multi MNO with a very diverse product base from the MNO strategy.

What are your most dynamic market zones and segments?
S.P: For us, the US continues to be a really big growth area. It has been a fuel for the expansion over the last few years; Europe is now picking up again as we see a significant activity in customers in the European market space. The interesting point is that M2M is becoming a little blurred from what it originally was, which was SIMs in dark machines. Though it’s uncertain from where the blurring started from but we are now seeing areas like business continuity, leased lines replacement, mobile broadband, high bandwidth services such as real time surveillance, CCTV, really start to drive different engagement with us as a solution provider and this is, what is driving our multi-domestic strategy. Today, to buy high bandwidth roamed environments is very difficult and the applications have started to require high data rates; but most of them are static. So, those are the areas that will really drive us forward in the next few years. Therefore, the more we get into these challenging environments, the more requirements there are on solutions rather than products. This solution may be as simple as adding a layer of service or support around the device up to include the integration of the SIM, the device and the application in a provision to the customer.

Can you mention some examples of applications and customers?
S.P: I can provide you with some of the examples of the things we are doing. For example, we are engaged very actively with a company that is providing real-time services around motorcycle accidents and the ability to link all of the emergency services together. So, when people think of an accident, they think of an ambulance or the recovery of the person whereas there are a lot of things beyond that. In UK, that whole market is around 1.2 million individuals. So, to provide a service that enables the collation of all the services that go around any form of accidents be it large or small including the insurance, the medical and the legal professions is an exciting venture for us. We’re deploying that right now and it has really started to show some acceleration. We also have some areas around asset tracking and fleet management and we are very excited about the usage-based insurance market space particularly when getting into driver behavior, driver telematics and not just vehicle telematics and that again is driving significant growth for us. But, we have diverse solutions all the way from credit-cards and parking meters to tracking of animals in the wild. Although, what really is driving significant growth is mainly retail applications such as digital signage, security applications such as CCTV, border entry or facial recognition. They’ve moved into mainstream M2M now!

Do you see a change in scale in the projects you address?
S.P: Yes, significantly. I think if in the past we were to take the fleet world for example, there are many small fleets out there that have done telematics for a long period of time. With the advent of user-based insurance or geographical insurance, we are now seeing 10 maybe a 100 times a scale of deployment because people think the more information we have the better we can manage things. It isn’t necessarily about fuel consumption, location or route anymore; it’s about those things plus how am I braking or, how am I driving or how am I accelerating. Hence, not only the scale of use has grown but also the scale of the features we are managing has grown significantly as well. Thus, this is good for the M2M business because it means more people with more information, more use cases and business models.

Security of M2M communications is more and more becoming a concern. What is Wyless’ answer to security concerns?
S.P: Wyless’ answer to security concern is that we have never been a public network. We built the company based around private & fixed IP, with IP security & VPNs laid over as a starting infrastructure, so, all our customers have access to that private fixed secured network which we either provide them as managed by them or managed by us infrastructure. Therefore, we run all the infrastructure to support that and we are very happy to engage in bringing up the individual security requirements at IT levels, at policy levels, particularly with enterprises. But, then, when it gets into the wireless world, it becomes free air! So we have to be sure that our communication is secure enough to not fall in the hands of hackers.

Is your service ready for the Internet of Things (i.e large volumes of objects connected)?
S.P: Yes, I think. As we are moving from the world of M2M to world of internet of things and probably that is why there is this blurring of objects. I think the real challenge with any object is how can you connect it and once connected what can you do with it. Also, how do you make sure that the relevant information is passed between the object and the application or the cloud. Therefore, we are actively working with as many devices manufacturers as we can to understand what the edge looks like and scale our connectivity and services at the edge to enable as many devices as needed across that infrastructure. Also, having the ability to aggregate data across not only multiple plans but also multiple operators to provide the seamless interface between all of those things, whether you are a CDMA user in the US or a GSM user in Europe, to us, it’s the same pool. We really provide as much as we can in that space, but back in our infrastructure we need to be ready for that explosion of objects that are connected. We have the ability to scale to tens of millions of objects at the edge of the network which is good. It also means that we have to be conscious of what we are trying to do within that space too. Most of the time we are not the application but we are the enabler of the application. So, for us the ability to move between our data infrastructure and the customer’s data infrastructure is the real key. It’s not only the scale in infrastructure, it’s the scale in capabilities, scale in the database architectures and infrastructures as well as the ability to connect all of those things together.

What are your projects in terms of new service offering? Can you please tell us more on what’s in your roadmap?
S.P: Well, the industry is moving at quite a fast pace. If you were to look in the MNO world, there are a couple of challenges that we think are on the horizon, for example the multi-IMSI and some of the new low-power radio operators. So, we need to consider the impact on subscription management, the ability to switch and use the right infrastructure…
It is clearly a significant piece where the roadmap of any company but particularly where Wyless will head to in the next 2-3 years. We are very actively engaged in what do networks truly become with the scale of the Internet of Things and the change in bandwidth requirements. Hence, we have a significant part to play in shaping the industry around the ability to make those features readily available. Also, if we can add that to our own device management support, bundling and tethering. I think the other side, and I am not sure many solutions exist for today, is the data warehousing and the data sales part of what this M2M or the Internet of Things world has become. Our real challenge over the next 2 or 3 years is to find those enabling technologies to add value to what we do. Everything is going to sit around that Porthos platform: that’s where we have invested a significant amount of our capital, also where all of our IPR is held and it’s our unique value. Thus, if we continue to build as well as add features and services around that core IPR, it’s going to position us well in the future.

The post Steve Priestley (Wyless) interviewed by M2M World News appeared first on IoT Business News.

In July, the ITU approved new standards concerning the Internet of Things and M2M.

Dr Bilel Jamoussi, Chief of the ITU-T’s Study Groups Department, explains what they are and the impact they will have.

How much do you think the lack of standards/regulation has held back the development of the M2M market?

Dr Bilel Jamoussi: M2M and the many other networked technologies that form the broad Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem will rely to an enormous extent on the technical interoperability provided by international standards. IoT technology development is flourishing but, without global standards, today’s fragmented IoT markets would continue to experience interoperability shortfalls, a lack of scalability and costs too high to achieve any significant growth. ICT standardization also runs in parallel with innovation, providing the common platforms needed to enable continued innovation and market development. There is, however, a natural lag between innovation and standardization as standards attempt to reflect new ICT ecosystems. A similar relationship exists between national regulations and international standards, whereby national regulations seek to apply the globally-agreed best practices presented by international standards. Global consensus is the key ingredient to ensuring global implementation of ITU Recommendations, and the ITU’s new IoT standards, created through the collaboration of governments and the private sector, will lead to national regulations encouraging widespread IoT market growth.

What are the key areas that the standards cover?

Recommendation ITU-T Y.2060, Overview of the Internet of Things, is a milestone that marks ITU members’ approval of a definition of IoT, terming it: “A global infrastructure for the Information Society, enabling advanced services by interconnecting (physical and virtual) things based on, existing and evolving, interoperable information and communication technologies.” It clarifies the concept and scope of IoT, identifying its fundamental characteristics and high-level requirements, and offering a detailed description of the IoT reference model. Additionally, the standard presents an informative appendix discussing the IoT ecosystem and the business models of which it will be composed.

Recommendation ITU-T Y.2061, Requirements for support of machine-oriented communication applications in the NGN environment, provides an overview of machine-oriented communication (MOC) applications in next-generation network (NGN) environments; covering the NGN extensions, additions and device capabilities required to support MOC applications.

Recommendation ITU-T Y.2062, Framework of object-to-object communication for ubiquitous networking in an NGN environment, describes the concept and high-level architectural model of such communication, and presents a mechanism to identify objects and enable communications between them.

Members have also recently consented the approval of another two IoT standards: Recommendations ITU-T Y.2063, Framework of Web of Things, and Y.2069, Terms and definitions for Internet of Things.

In addition, ITU-T’s new Focus Group on the M2M Service Layer (FG M2M) has just begun its work to identify the standardization demands of a common M2M service layer, focusing initially on the healthcare sector.

It is essential that we establish a common M2M service layer, agreed at the global level by stakeholders from the M2M and vertical-market communities, in order to provide an internationally-accessible, cost-efficient platform able to be easily deployed in hardware and software, in a multi-vendor environment and across industry sectors.

What difference will your definition/standards make to the players in this ecosystem?

ITU’s new IoT standards are an indication of global consensus on the technical environment to underpin IoT, and this unified view of IoT’s parameters will lead to an explosion in the development and implementation of IoT’s constituent technologies. The IoT ecosystem demands a strong basis in international technical standards, as the market can only begin to scale up IoT implementation once IoT’s functional architectures have been defined. The ICT sector’s willingness to implement IoT currently outweighs its capability to do so; a capability closely linked to the availability of globally-agreed standards. Standardized definitions, frameworks and functional architectures will provide clear guidance to the IoT technology development occurring around the globe, clarifying the technologies to form the broad IoT ecosystem as well as the technical preconditions for its functionality. Global consensus on the definition and scope of IoT will encourage the development of a multi-vendor environment characterized by interoperable IoT solutions, greater economies of scale and a wider adoption of services.

If 50 billion devices are to be connected to the Internet by 2020, global standards will have a central role to play – stipulating the common communication protocols and functional frameworks required to enable such ubiquitous ICT networking.

Source: eurocomms.com

The post ITU new standards for the Internet of Things and M2M appeared first on IoT Business News.

At the beginning of June, Sigfox, a recently established French company, launched the first cellular network fully dedicated to low-throughput M2M and IoT communications.

Interview with Ludovic Le Moan, CEO of Sigfox and Christophe Fourtet, CTO and founder of the company, by the M2M World News team.

• How did you come up with the idea of a cellular network dedicated to Machine-to-Machine?

  L. Le Moan: The idea is the result of a meeting with Christophe Fourtet combined with several years spent on the M2M market trying to develop solutions based on GPRS. Over 7 years, I’ve seen many projects stopped mainly because of an unsolvable economical equation.

• What are the advantages of your network?

  L. Le Moan: The key advantage of our network is how simple it is to set up. This means it has low deployment and management costs, allowing us to offer groundbreaking tariffs for low-throughput data communications. In addition, we are using very low emission power which guarantees excellent stand-by time for any sensor connected to our network.

• According to your estimations, what percentage of the M2M market can be addressed with low-throughput communications?

  L. Le Moan: Well, it depends on whether we answer the question in terms of the volume of connected objects or in terms of revenue. Concerning the numbers, my estimate is that 80% of the objects to be connected could be managed through low data-rate communications. In terms of revenue, I believe it corresponds to 50% of the market.

• In your opinion, are existing and proven cellular communication technologies such as GSM insufficient to meet the needs of M2M and IoT applications? Are you addressing the same markets as existing M2M mobile operators?

  L. Le Moan: The cellular networks currently in place cannot support the connections and flows that will be generated by the billions of objects of the Internet of Things, even though they have very little data to transmit. The analogy we could make is using a pipeline to feed a sprinkler. Moreover, the Internet of Things, in order to become a reality, requires ultra low-cost and low-power communications which cannot be achieved today by the mobile operators. Nevertheless, we believe that there is room and opportunity for both low and high-throughput cellular solutions and we are open to working with mobile operators to complement their services.

• You have announced very aggressive prices for your communications, at least 10 times lower than the competing solutions. What is the price of your UNB* modems?

  L. Le Moan: The Ultra Narrow Band modems are designed and manufactured by well-known partners, and they are offered at prices around 10€ per unit. In bulk, their cost will quickly drop below 5€ and we anticipate that within 24 months, we’ll have solutions below 1€.

• M2M communications require a high level of reliability and a long service lifespan. How are you going to address these two factors?

  L. Le Moan: The Sigfox network supports low-throughput data communications and the protocol has been designed to offer optimal quality of service even when operated within the ISM band. After 3 years of intense development and testing, completed by the multiple field tests performed by our industrial customers, we are very confident about our solution, both in terms of performance and robustness. This has enabled us to sign several Machine-to-Machine contracts requiring high levels of quality and commitment of service.

• The M2M and the Internet of Things markets are in need of international technological standards. Do you think that a proprietary technology like the UNB* can find its place here?

  C. Fourtet: Our system has been designed and calculated to offer a high capacity of connections within the ISM frequency bands, which are complex to use because of the shared spectrum and even though we expect growing use of those frequencies.
  We therefore have the capability to commercially deploy our solution without having to wait for M2M standardization whether at the system or spectrum level.
  But we do believe that, at some point, the Machine-to-Machine and Internet of Things solutions will somehow be standardized and that our system will be very well positioned to be adopted as standard for low-throughput communications. We have already started to work with this in mind.

• You present the Sigfox technology as a very low energy solution, both at network and at terminal (modem) levels. How can you guarantee a robust signal and communication using such a low energy level?

  C. Fourtet: Our systems have a large « cognitive » capacity, which translates into a high selectivity level and built with auto-adaptive mechanisms. Therefore, the impact of a standard signal on our own signals is very weak and vice versa.
  To reach this goal, we have embedded the intelligence and signal processing « tricks » within the network nodes, thus keeping the customer’s radio terminal as simple as possible. The network infrastructure is designed to serve the terminals. The reason our network nodes are so low-energy is that we have made many innovations in the signal processing.

• On which frequency bands are you going to operate on a global scale?

  C. Fourtet: As already mentioned, the entire system has been calculated to efficiently and safely operate within different frequency bands such as the possibly crowded ISM spectrum. We achieve such a performance level thanks to our technical choices at radio (Ultra Narrow Band*), protocol (FSFDMA** access) and signal processing levels.
  If, in the future, frequency bands are specifically allocated for M2M / IoT, our solution will be perfectly placed to operate in any dedicated spectrum.

• What are the possible evolutions of the UNB technology?

  C. Fourtet: We already have new features in our roadmap such as geolocation, variable throughput to be able to reach objects that are deeply embedded or increase the data rate for easy to reach objects. We’ll also have new security classes as well as mobility management.

• Sigfox is positioned as an M2M/IoT operator with ambitious objectives in terms of both number of objects connected and geographical footprint. Which areas are you focusing on as a priority?

  L. Le Moan: We will initially target Europe. But we are also considering extending our solution to the rest of world assuming that our network complies with all the applicable regulations in the target countries. In addition, the deployment of a UNB network is extremely fast compared to a “standard” cellular network.

• Do you intend to become a worldwide operator or are you considering licensing your solution within a certain number of countries?

  L. Le Moan: We are having discussions with the established mobile operators to offer to extend their services and offer low-throughput communications using our solution. This could lead to signed partnerships, which would also accelerate our service deployment.

Thank you for answers.

About Ludovic le Moan – CEO : Engineer graduated from ENSIMAG (group Polytechnique Grenoble), Ludovic le Moan (48) started his career in scientific and business positions prior to taking over the management of COFRAMI Group (1500 people). He left the position to create Anyware Technologies, a company specialised in M2M data management software which he further sold to Wavecom. He then founded GOOJET, now called Scoop.it, the curation leader (human management of fields of expertise through internet), that he left to become CEO of SIGFOX in December 2010 (and secured the first 2 million euros round table at that time). Ludovic le Moan is a serial entrepreneur who takes on his free time to provide many and one business founders with free advice and help. Some of those entities and seed companies are federated within one of Ludovic’s initiatives called TIC Valley (TIC stands for Information and Communication Technology) , a melting pot of talents, ideas, fledgling entrepreneurs and Start-ups that are selected to receive assistance and grow in a protected environment where services and knowledge are mutualised. He personally contributed to spotting and ensuring the success of tens of French and International companies.

Christophe Fourtet – Scientific Director and company founder : Engineer graduated from INSA (Lyon) in electrical and telecommunications sciences, and holding a postdoc in electromagnetism, Christophe Fourtet (45), founder of SIGFOX, also is the source of the disruptive technology the company holds. Christophe Fourtet spent his entire career in the electromagnetic and radio-frequency business units of blue chip companies (DGA, SAGEM, Motorola, Freescale). Among other achievements he contributed to creating the HW cellular group(that created the Motorola cellular phone ). His extensive expertise enabled him to master bridging the gap between technology and high volume manufacturing product. Since 2003, Christophe Fourtet has become an ANR expert. Passionate about radiofrequency, his expertise has come to be acknowledged worldwide.

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