Swedish IoT operator Netmore Group has started to deploy a public LoRaWAN network in France, it has said. Its French debut follows a period of busy expansion in 2022, following its acquisition of Nordic IoT Networks in early 2021 and its strategic shift to focus on public LoRaWAN infrastructure. It has since launched or acquired public LoRaWAN networks in Sweden, the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, and France.
It has roaming agreements in Finland and Switzerland. The firm’s ambition is to offer LoRaWAN across all of Europe; it offers a European “coverage guarantee” already. The group – founded in 2010, listed on the Nasdaq SME market (First North Growth Market) in 2017, acquired by long-time shareholder Polar Structure in 2022 – has appointed Arnaud Delprat, partnership development director at Verizon Business for 10 years, to lead its French operation.
The company’s French debut might just fill a hole in the public LoRaWAN landscape in France, following the much debated demise of Bouygues Telecom’s LoRaWAN network last year – at least in terms of the number of providers.
Netmore is pitching battery-powered IoT for water monitoring consumption and conservation. It is targeting water utilities and municipal authorities, plus private enterprises, to engage LoRaWAN sensors to improve sub-metering, leakage control, and manhole monitoring, it said. It is offering corresponding solutions for gas, district heating, and electricity management, as well. Commercial partnerships in infrastructure rollout are being signed in France.
Netmore deploys LoRaWAN infrastructure in “close collaboration” with partners, it said, citing platform providers, solution developers, unit developers, and real estate companies as examples. The suggestion is that partners build the LoRaWAN network with Netmore for their own private ends, and then make it available publicly with Netmore as a joint-commercial exercise – much like the Helium “community” model for LoRaWAN network building.
Netmore said: “This agile approach and our strong partner networks are a vital part of the recipe for success that has [seen] our solutions used by major players in an increasing number of geographic markets. This has contributed to Netmore LoRaWAN now being the fastest growing professional LoRaWAN network in Europe.” Netmore said it will “immediately” offer on-demand LoRaWAN coverage for large-scale IoT projects.
It added: “Customers, partners, and other companies that contribute to the transformation of a sustainable society can plan long-term to achieve a smart metering infrastructure that is cost-effective, reliable, and based on proven technology…. Netmore’s expansion follows the need for connectivity, which creates the conditions for a competitive offering structure that together with proven technology provides conditions for projects that run over many years.”
Ove Anebygd, chief executive at Netmore Group, said: “The French market offers great potential when it comes to future rollouts of smart meters, not least in the water segment. We look forward to creating the conditions for improved decision-making through data collection, and we are pleased that our expertise and proven track-record of delivering large-scale device connectivity for critical utilities is now facing the French market.”
Delprat, new managing director of Netmore in France, said: “It is through strong collaborations that conditions are created for long-term projects that benefit the entire society in the transition to a more sustainable way of life.
We welcome and look forward to initiating more strategic collaborations with French companies, to the benefit of communities and citizens.”
This week, Netmore has agreed also to sell its machine-to-machine (M2M) division, Netmore M2M, which seels SIM-based cellular IoT solutions, to Maltese telecom and IoT operator Melita for €1.75 million (plus an additional conditional cash fee of €2.6 million). Netmore M2M has 300 customers in over 30 countries. For existing Netmore M2M customers, Melita adds a proprietary connectivity portal with better functionality and security options, it said.
Netmore announced a LoRaWAN two-way roaming agreement with operator Swisscom last July it signed a LoRaWAN roaming deal with Finnish operator Digita last March. Meanwhile, the company announced the rollout of LoRaWAN infrastructure in Denmark in July via subsidiary company European Connectivity Networks (ECN). ECN acquired both Spanish LoRaWAN operator Redexia and Dutch LoRaWAN operator Techtenna last June.
Netmore’s UK and Ireland expansion started in mid-2021. The firm has since claimed big-name LoRaWAN supply contracts with water utility Yorkshire Water in the UK (worth up to £47 million, covering 360,000 properties), energy equipment and solutions firm DS Energy in Denmark (up to 10,000 sensors), and real-estate services company Newsec in Sweden (covering 9,000 properties).
