We sat down with Guillaume Houssay, co-founder and CEO of Qowisio North America, to discuss the company’s view on providing LoRa-based low power wide area network services in a more targeted basis rather than looking to provide the widest possible coverage. France-based Qowisio offers solutions targeting the “internet of things” space, from physical sensors to its own UNB LoRa-based network. .
“We see [narrowband-IoT] as a complement technology to what already exists,” Houssay said. “If you think of Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Bluetooth, they don’t really compete with each other. There is some overlap, but we see NB-IoT as different because it is licensed frequencies. You will have specific chipsets for that. For sure the cost of the connectivity will be higher. We see there is high competition, but at this time we see them as complements and we are not focused on the same use cases.”
The company was founded in 2009 as an IoT sensor manufacturer, but started providing a more holistic solution in 2015 with the creation of its own low-power network. The combination of sensors, networking and software allow the company to stay present across an entire value chain of connected devices.
“For us the network is a commodity, we don’t bet on selling a commodity to our customers,” Houssay said. “We want to understand their business requirements so usually we discuss with CIO, chief innovation officers, marketing officers, where they want to generate more revenue.”
Qowisio currently has its network deployed in more than 30 countries and covers all of France. The company is looking to expand into the U.S. with a new North American headquarters in Austin, Texas.
“Qowisio is working in LPWA environments,” Houssay said. “What makes the difference with other companies in this field is we provide a comprehensive solution from the devices we design in-house with a portfolio of over 40 devices. That includes the connectivity, meaning private and public network as well as dashboards. So when we go to discuss with clients we provide an entire solution and we really discuss business requirements and we translate the requirements into technical execution.”
