The IoT network is expected to cover 94% of the U.K. population by end-2018
French IoT specialists Sigfox has signed an agreement with U.K. operator WND to deploy a nationwide IoT network in the U.K. before the end of 2018.
The LPWA network is expected to reach 94% of the UK’s population. Prior to this agreement, the French firm had an agreement with Arqiva. That prior partnership had only managed to reach 30% of the population, mostly focused around a total of 11 major population centers across the U.K. The partnership between Sigfox and Arqiva ended last week, according to local press reports.
The Sigfox network is currently present in 32 countries, 12 of which with nationwide coverage, including France and Spain. Sigfox expects to operate in 60 countries by the end of 2018.
Meanwhile, WND has obtained contracts for similar networks in several Latin American countries. The company has network deployments in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.
Sigfox inks partnership with Bosh to produce its new access station
In related news, Sigfox announced that it has partnered with Bosh to produce the Sigfox access station.
The French company said that the Sigfox Access Station will be produced on the Bosch Mondeville site in Normandy, France.
“This manufacturing agreement is part of our global partnership strategy with the Bosch Group, through which we commit together to the industrial internet of things. The industrial excellence of Bosch, which enjoys a worldwide reputation, is a guarantee of safety, precision and very high reliability for the equipment on the Sigfox network”, said Christophe Fourtet, co-founder and scientific director of Sigfox.
The new Sigfox access station is a component of the network antennas and offers high capacity, to support the large-scale deployment of IoT solutions worldwide, Sigfox said.
The Sigfox access station is designed according to cognitive radio or Software Defined Radio (SDR) principles. It can process more than 10 million messages per day and offers ten times more computing power than its previous version, the French firm added.
