Orange Poland is running tests aimed at developing methods of communication with drones and their application scenarios using an Ericsson 5G base station at the Institute of Communications’ facilities in Warsaw. The base station is the tenth 5G test site deployed by the cellco in the capital, using test 3.4GHz-3.6GHz frequency permits, while Orange is also testing 5G in Lublin and Zakopane.
Australian IoT operator Thinxtra is partnering Japan’s Soracom for a new cellular IoT SIM-based service covering Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong to complement its existing Sigfox OG network. Thinxtra says that its cellular IoT offering ‘delivers a global pay-per-use consumption model, self-serve routing options, enhanced security and minimised data management,’ adding that its partnership with Soracom ‘delivers connectivity management that overcomes some of the most problematic challenges to successful IoT deployments, including cost blowouts, long lead times and the inability to easily scale.’
Brazilian MVNO IoT specialist Next Level Telecom (NLT) has signed a contract to use the American Tower LoRA network powered by Everynet in Brazil, which is currently present in 220 cities representing 60% of the nation’s GDP. NLT’s agreement is part of a hybrid solution combining LoRA and GSM technologies, with its CEO Andre Martins commenting on the development: ‘LoRA will help to popularise IoT. Its cost, both for devices and connectivity, is ten to 20 times cheaper than GSM. The tendency is for the volume of LoRA devices in our network to reach or exceed that of GSM this year. But there will always be a demand for a more robust and reliable network such as the GSM network, whose topology is more mature than that of LoRA.’
Australian LoRA network operator National Narrowband Network (NNNCo) has partnered Agriculture Victoria to expand the unlicensed-spectrum IoT network’s coverage for 600 farms representing around 5,000 square kilometres across four regions in the state of Victoria, in a project funded by the local government.
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