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Irish delivery service An Post recruits Sigfox for “thousands” of logistics trackers

Irish postal company and fleet operator An Post Mails & Parcels (An Post) has contracted Irish Sigfox operator VT Networks to equip and monitor “several thousand” roll cages and containers for parcel processing and distribution. The state-owned logistics firm said the move, to embrace connected...

Lufthansa gets spectrum licence, deploys Nokia private 5G for remote engine checks

Note, this story has been referenced and updated in a new post, Lufthansa doubles-down with second private 5G trial – with help from Vodafone, which can be found here. German airline Deutsche Lufthansa (Lufthansa) has gained a spectrum licence for operating private LTE and...

Industrial alliance forms around telegram-splitting LoRaWAN and NB-IoT-rival MIOTY

A band of research organizations and industrial companies have formed the MIOTY Alliance to promote telegram-splitting ultra-narrowband (TS-UNB), commercialized as MIOTY, as an alternative  low-power wide-area (LPWA) technology to the likes of LoRaWAN and NB-IoT in the industrial IoT and smart cities markets. MIOTY (a...

‘Vulnerability makes us strong’ – team LoRa urged to embrace paranoia of open IoT

Amsterdam-based LoRaWAN group The Things Network (TTN) has instructed the IoT community at large to draw strength, as a collective working with open technologies, from its apparent weaknesses as a "vulnerable" loose-knit faction locked in innovation projects.   Wienke Giezeman, co-founder and chief executive at TTN,...

Dell-backed edge AI firm FogHorn gets $25m fund, signs Stanley B&D, Honeywell

California-based industrial AI developer Foghorn has closed $25 million in a series C round of funding, led by LS Corp, part of $25 billion South Korean industrial conglomerate LS Group. It said the new funds will accelerate growth among industrialists seeking digital change in...

“Humans should be arbiters of AI decisions” – Bosch sets down ‘red lines’ on industrial AI

Germany industrialist Bosch has set out a ‘code of ethics’ around the usage of artificial intelligence (AI) in its connected products, which says humans should be the arbiter of any AI-based decisions. The firm has issued a set of guidelines, a number of ‘red lines’,...

Private nets with Voda, Industry 4.0 with Ford, Robin Hood lives – UK’s £35m 5G trials

The UK government has announced the winners of a £35 million funding pot for rural and industrial 5G projects, alongside a new $30 million 5G development competition for the media, gaming, logistics, and tourism sectors. Projects include private networking with Vodafone, Industry 4.0 with...

5G, 0G, all these Gs? Gee-eze – the IoT pie is bigger than that, says LoRaWAN champ

An intro-video plays as the founders of The Things Network (TTN), take to the stage at their annual LoRaWAN bash in Amsterdam. A Hollywood-style voiceover crows about big-sounding tech - something about 5G and 0G, and all the other Gs – before the baritone...

Operators are best placed to serve Industry 4.0 with 5G slices, says Huawei

Huawei said today at a London launch event for new 5G gear that it would prefer to go via the operator community to serve the Industry 4.0 movement, using slices of their licensed public networks to create dedicated networks for industrial automation and intelligence. It...

BMW, Microsoft recruit InBev, Bosch to help resolve IoT connectivity and analytics

Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev), Bosch Group, and ZF Friedrichshafen Group have joined the steering committee for the Open Manufacturing Platform (OMP). BMW Group and Microsoft are already on board as founding members. OMP was established under the umbrella of the Joint Development Foundation, part of...

Ericsson tests URLLC capabilities for factory automation at Audi’s P-Labs

  Ericsson and Audi announced they are currently testing Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (URLLC) capabilities for factory automation at the car manufacturer’s P-Labs facility in Germany. The two companies highlighted that smart factories of the future with automated production systems featuring robots and Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs)...

Telekom Slovenia tees-up hybrid public-private LTE and 5G for Industry 4.0

Telekom Slovenia and Slovenia-based industrial tech provider Iskratel are to deploy hybrid public-private LTE and 5G networks for Industry 4.0. The pair said they will undertake an analysis of market needs, perform equipment interoperability testing, and investigate spectrum planning aspects. Their arrangement will focus on...

‘Enterprises don’t want to know about RAN’ – Ericsson on walking the Industry 4.0 walk

Technologists and industrialists have been at cross purposes in their attempts to make industrial IoT stick, according to Ericsson. The telecoms sector, pushing various forms of cellular connectivity as a springboard for industrial change, must review its sales patter, the company said. More than...

Nokia and Airtel push private LTE and industrial AI to India’s manufacturing sector

Nokia has struck a deal with Indian operator Bharti Airtel to offer private LTE and industrial AI to enterprises in the manufacturing and distribution sector. The pair said their partnership around private networking in India will also draw in customers in the financial services, information...

On-device AI is “new normal” – Arm claims mega-jump in edge AI with new chip combo

On-device AI on minuscule IoT units will be the "new normal", said UK-based Arm, as it unveiled a 480-times boost in edge processing performance with two new chip designs, pairing the latest in its Cortex-M line with a new micro neural processing unit...

Telenor signs up to resell Ericsson’s private LTE and 5G factory bundle

Swedish operator Telenor has tied-up with country-mate Ericsson to sell the vendor’s pre-packed private LTE and 5G to factories and warehouses. It is the first operator to sign as a reseller of the Industry 4.0 bundle –announced a year ago.  Transport company Scania, another Swedish...

Dell, STMicro, Software AG unite in Tangle-over-blockchain for industrial IoT

Dell Computers, STMicroelectronics, and Software AG have thrown their weight behind blockchain-rival The Tangle to record and secure transactions and payments between machines in the industrial IoT space.  The companies, joined by various others from the tech and research sectors, have formed a new working...

CBRS champ Celona claims private LTE deployments, carrier-beating metrics

California-based private LTE/5G startup and CBRS champ Celona has announced eight test deployments of its wireless networking solution using CBRS spectrum, along with new partnerships for CBRS-based networks with edge networking firm Cradlepoint and supply-chain tech provider World Wide Technology (WWT). Celona, which closed $10...

VW and BMW raise industrial 5G stakes – how German car giants are tooling up for Industry 4.0

German car giants Volkswagen and BMW have confirmed massive Industry 4.0 investments, and firmed up their interests in private industrial 5G as a means to factory automation and slicker production. Volkswagen has announced “further” investment in digital technologies at its flagship plant in Wolfsburg. The...

‘Defcon 1’ for supply chain – how to manage coronavirus and implement digital change

The Digital Supply Chain Institute, a US research group focused on the evolution of supply chains in the digital economy, has recommended supply chain companies set up ‘war rooms’ to track and respond to the coronavirus crisis, and seek to implement automation and analytics...

LoRaWAN duo Senet and Objenious fast-track Digital Matter IoT trackers

US LoRaWAN provider Senet and French LoRaWAN provider Objenious have both certified battery-operated tracking devices and telematics software from Australian IoT maker Digital Matter. The certification means ready integration and faster deployment of Digital Matter devices on LoRaWAN infrastructure from Senet and Objenious. Senet has...

5G should cover 70% of industrial sites by 2025, tech sector tells EU leaders

By 2025, 5G connections should cover 40 per cent of Europe’s workforce, 70 per cent of its industrial sites, and 80 per cent of its main logistics routes. This was the message from DigitalEurope, the trade association for the European tech industry, at the...

Nokia signs 40 private LTE customers as enterprise sales bolster Q4 performance

Nokia signed “nearly” 40 new customers for private LTE networks in the three months to the end of 2019, it said. It grew its private LTE client base by around 50 per cent in the period. Nokia now has contracts for private LTE networks...

‘Manufacturers want proof’ – Ericsson looks to bottle fizz and pop of industrial IoT

Industrial IoT’s biggest problem? The fear of failure in a risk adverse industry. So says Ericsson, which recommends a two-pronged approach to spur takeup among overly-cautious manufacturing companies. The first fix is to drive starter IoT with proven low-level sensor solutions; the second is to...