BROWSING: Energy

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

IoT tracking in the supply chain industry – the lowest start and the biggest finish?

Note, this is the foreword from a new report on IoT tracking in the supply chain industry; the report is linked here and (repeatedly) in the article below – and also in the images at the bottom. The title of this piece might have...

Top five sectors for cellular IoT – c/o Telit

There is a reason why the logistics sector is the favourite market for IoT. Because IoT, arguably, consists of only two distinct applications – asset tracking and condition monitoring – and the first of these, by definition, is about the positional aspect of ‘things’-in-motion....

‘Largest private industrial 5G network in Europe’ – by Nokia, for ASN (Nokia)

The “largest private industrial 5G network in Europe” has opened in Calais, in France, using 59 small cell antennas to cover a 50,000 square-metre production site belonging to Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), the optical submarine division of telecoms vendor Nokia. The Finnish firm has...

Five days on the road – the journey of change for the supply chain (a truck-driving song)

There is an argument, gathering popularity, that the IoT market has grown up; that IoT just works, well enough, at last – so that technology is no longer the start-point for a conversation with industry about digital change. Instead, a linear narrative can now...

Airtel to connect 200,000 smart meters

Under the terms of the deal, the Indian telco will deploy its proprietary IoT platform 'Airtel IoT Hub'   India’s largest telecom operator, Bharti Airtel, announced that it has won a contract to provide a cellular IoT solution for TP Western Odisha Distribution Limited (TPWODL). TPWODL is...

Celona on CBRS-bashing by old telco crowd – plus global expansion, growth verticals

Last month, the CBRS community in the US made a swift counter-strike, in the form of a joint letter to the FCC and NTIA, against a report by telecoms lobby group CTIA that said private and shared cellular is bad for the US economy...

Siemens and Qualcomm test indoor private 5G in CBRS for building automation

Siemens has worked with Qualcomm to deploy an indoor private 5G network in CBRS spectrum at Siemens headquarters in Chicago, with a view to test and develop solutions to automate building functions and services. The private 5G trial network is being used, initially to...

Australian supermarket chain Coles deploys Sigfox tracking for poultry supply chain

Australian supermarket chain Coles is running track-and-trace of its poultry supply chain, based on an IoT tracking and monitoring solution by pallet pooling company Loscam and local Sigfox operator Thinxtra. The pair has attached sensors to 4,500 poultry ‘bins’ (containers) moving between its suppliers’...

‘Don’t talk tech just because you don’t get the vertical’ – the hardest industry of all

There was a good panel session, yesterday (November 29; see cover image, available on-demand), on IoT tracking in the supply chain, which brought insightful content and commentary from leading IoT outfits DeltaTrak, Telit, and Unabiz, plus from analyst house ABI Research. But even with...

Skyworks, Sequans combine on “smallest” LTE-M and NB-IoT system-in-package

Semiconductor firm Skyworks Solutions claims to have produced the world’s smallest dual-mode cellular IoT system-in-package (SiP) solution. The US outfit partnered with IoT chip and module maker Sequans Communications on the product, numbered SKY66431, to combine the France-based firm’s Monarch 2 modem with its...

Smart energy: Three things to remember this winter (Reader Forum)

Brace yourself: Winter is coming and this year looks tough. The double whammy of tight energy supplies and rising costs are placing pressure on consumers around the world. To make matters worse, Europe is already flagging energy restrictions. In Italy, for example, buildings will...

Supply chain scale-up project44 bags $80m from Maersk, others – takes value to $2.7bn

A sure sign of spiralling interest in asset tracking; US supply-chain software outfit project44 has raised an $80 million funding round led by UK-based investment company Generation Investment Management and Denmark-based A.P. Moller Holding, the investment arm of A.P. Moller Maersk, and parent of...

Reasons to track – eight percent of goods, 3.6 percent of profits vanish in supply chain

Eight percent of stock in the supply chain, between production and consumption, never even arrives – mostly because it either spoils in transit (4.3 percent) or is discarded as surplus (3.4 percent). This failure of stock preservation and demand forecasting (“overproduction”) in the supply...

Fujitsu tests private 5G for equipment inspection, remote recovery at data centres

Japanese IT firm Fujitsu is to start testing private 5G for equipment inspection at its major data centre in Yokohama, in the Kanagawa prefecture, as a springboard to drive “operational resilience and process automation” in the broader data centre market. The Fujitsu project, to...