BROWSING: IoT

Telefônica, Nokia fast-track Petrobras private LTE rollout to 18 sites in Brazil

Brazilian oil and gas giant Petróleo Brasileiro (Petrobras) is multiplying its private LTE operations across its offshore and onshore facilities, according to a report in Latin American business publication BNamericas. LTE networks have so far been deployed on 11 out of 29 offshore oil...

Semtech closes $1.2bn Sierra Wireless deal to pair LoRa and cellular in 10x IoT market

US firm Semtech has concluded its acquisition of Canada’s Sierra Wireless for $1.2 billion, nearly doubling its annual revenue. The deal, announced in August last year, brings together Semtech’s LoRa/LoRaWAN property, enabling non-cellular low-power wide-area (LPWA) IoT in unlicensed spectrum, with Sierra Wireless’ well-established...

Massive IoT offers massive opportunities during energy trilemma (Reader Forum)

Massive IoT – or massive machine-type communications (mMTC) – is all around us. We live in a vast connected ecosystem of data-gathering applications that draw on comparatively low levels of data at source but which, when aggregated by application vendor or enterprise user, is...

IoT in 2023 – in a groove with energy harvesting, in a rut with printable electronics

The latest edition of ABI Research’s likeable annual tech predictions about what will fly in the year ahead, and what will splutter on the runway and return to the shed, has come up with a couple of interesting counterpoints in the massive IoT saga....

Maersk announces major smart logistics centres in China, Norway, Pakistan

Danish shipping company A.P. Moller - Maersk (Maersk) has announced new smart logistics and warehouse facilities in China, Norway, and Pakistan. Each site puts focus on innovation and environmental sustainability. Maersk has also confirmed the acquisition of Danish project logistics specialist Martin Bencher Group...

Ericsson adds IT-geared Cradlepoint CBRS offer to “broadest” private 5G portfolio

Ericsson has added a new IT-focused private cellular offering from US-based subsidiary Cradlepoint, acquired in late 2020, into its private 5G portfolio. Cradlepoint’s NetCloud Private Networks solution is said to be tailored to the needs of “lean IT-oriented enterprises”, including in the logistics, light...

BT makes an Industry 4.0 sandwich – from a fortified private 5G loaf

As promised and previewed last week, here is a full transcript of the interview with Marc Overton, managing director of BT’s industrial go-to-market business Division X – from a conversation a couple of months back, at the UK operator’s annual Robotics Festival at its...

Industry 4.0 warriors (and worriers) – auto, pharma, logistics top McKinsey robotics poll

A new survey by global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company says robotics and automation systems will account for 25 percent of capital spending by industrial companies over the next five years, mostly for routine manual tasks in the logistics and fulfillment, retail and...

Europe sets binding 2030 targets to boost digital skills, infrastructure, industry

European countries are now required to jointly develop and measure progress on digital skills, digital infrastructure, and digitalisation of both private industry and public services. A new ‘monitoring and cooperation’ mechanism obliges EU member states to collaborate on the development, implementation, and measurement of...

Wide-area (mostly cellular) RTA tracker market to reach 117m connections by 2027

The global market for wide-area RTA trackers, comprising low-power IoT trackers attached to returnable transport assets (RTAs) like multi-usage crates and containers, will reach 117.3 million connections by 2027, according to analyst house ABI Research. The projected rise is spurred mostly by the increasing...

Vertical farmer 80 Acres taps Siemens to automate and scale US production sites

Ohio-based indoor and vertical farming specialist 80 Acres Farms has appointed the US-branch of German industrial tech giant Siemens to supply hardware and software to automate and scale its expanding US operations. Siemens is also providing capital into the project, it said. A statement...

Five forecasts for digitial change in the supply chain in 2023 (Reader Forum)

Digital transformation of supply chains has solidified as a boardroom topic over the past 12 months. While this drive for industrial change can be attributed to international developments, it is also true that many companies now clearly see the benefits of adopting new digital...

A smarter diagnsois – machine learning in personalized medicine (Reader Forum)

The benefits of machine learning have been abundantly clear for decades, but perhaps nowhere more so than in the field of medicine. With physics-based simulations, 3D modeling, and machine learning methods, medical professionals and researchers have made significant strides in numerous specialties. While there...

Assessing the LTE Cat-1 bis market – and Qualcomm’s late entry into it (Reader Forum)

There is a clear dichotomy in the cellular IoT market – high-throughput and high-power IoT applications powered by advanced 4G (LTE) and 5G at one end, and low-throughput and low-power applications powered by cellular IoT technologies like NB-IoT and LTE-M at the other. And...

Verizon deploys private 5G for Deloitte Industry 4.0 showcase at Wichita State

Verizon has deployed a private 5G network at the 5,500 square-metre ‘smart factory’ at Wichita State University in Kansas, in the US. The showcase facility, dubbed Smart Factory @ Wichita, is on the university’s science research campus. It is sponsored and “convened” by the...

MachineQ strikes deal with TOTO to plumb LoRaWAN into restrooms in the US

Japan-based plumbing manufacturer TOTO is using LoRaWAN to connect and manage restroom facilities in airports, stadiums, hotels, and office buildings in the US. It is working with Comcast-owned MachineQ to connect its portfolio of ECOPOWER flush valves in toilets and urinals, as well as...

“It is still a bit of a zoo” – BT sets up as Industry 4.0 keeper and private 5G leader

Contrary to the popular narrative among new telco upstarts that traditional mobile operators will be left behind in the Industry 4.0 race – on the grounds they are entrenched and parochial, geared for box-shifting and hobbled by local assets – UK-based BT says the...

The vital importance of data for the future of the planet (Reader Forum)

Data is vital for monitoring the environment to improve the way increasingly scarce resources are used. The ability to monitor the systems that manage those resources anywhere on the globe is also vital, but it can be a challenge. Cellular 3G and 4G technologies...

1NCE promises to “disrupt” IoT industry again with free and easy IoT software tools

Cellular IoT provider 1NCE has said it wants to repeat its trick with flat-rate global IoT pricing to also “disrupt” the IoT industry with free device and cloud management software. At CES in Las Vegas, the firm has launched a new operating system (OS),...

AMI specialist Ubiik wins ‘biggest’ IoT gig in Taiwan, targets global private LTE market

Taiwanese IoT metering company Ubiik has won a $17 million tender from Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) for the deployment of an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) system to host 450,000 additional smart meters. It is the company’s fourth consecutive AMI-tender win in Taiwan, it said,...

Volvo Cars takes total ownership of autonomous driving software firm Zenseact

Swedish car manufacturer Volvo Cars has taken full ownership of its autonomous driving software division Zenseact. It said it acquired the remaining 13.5 percent of shares in Zenseact from automotive software and hardware company ECARX, co-founded in 2017 by Eric Li, as the company's...

Indian IoT provider Quantela targets US smart cities with T-Mobile NB-IoT bundle

India-based IoT provider Quantela has signed a deal with T-Mobile in the US to bundle the carrier's cellular IoT airtime with its smart-city solutions. Quantela is focused on cities and utilities in the US, it said, particularly in the smart street-lighting space. The firm said...

Electronics maker Asus signs 5G and IoT smart-city partnership in Germany

Taiwanese electronics maker Asus has announced a deal with German media company Media Broadcast to deploy smart-city solutions at various locations across Germany. The agreement is with Asus's AI and IoT division, called Asus IoT. It will cover the deployment of private 5G campus...

Surge in smart electric meters in US, Canada – on new upgrades and late adopters

The installed base of smart electricity meters in North America is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.8 percent during 2021-2027 to reach a total of 173.4 million units at the end of the period, according to a new...