Telenor Denmark has announced it is establishing an independent unit under its B2B division responsible for private networks and IoT solutions, aimed at industrial and commerce sectors ‘that can benefit from a tailored network with a guarantee of minimal response time and extra security’. Telenor says the move stems from the rollout of 5G (including Standalone 5G planned for this year) and the modernisation of 4G, which offers new opportunities for building closed, tailor-made network solutions. Particular focus will be on manufacturers and heavy industrial companies who, with their special need to integrate robots and sensors in real time, will benefit from their own private wireless network without wires and cables. In addition, the solutions are also expected to be attractive for companies with office employees, where a private network adapted to the individual customer’s needs can act as a replacement or supplement to the traditional Wi-Fi. The new unit will be responsible for sales, product development and marketing of the new private networks and IoT solutions,
Australia’s Telstra announced a AUD100 million (USD72 million) deal with Intellihub that will see Telstra provide up to 4.1 million IoT SIMs to Intellihub over the next decade, representing the telco’s largest IoT deal to date in terms of value and number of connected devices. Using the Cisco Jasper platform, the IoT SIMs will be incorporated into Intellihub’s smart meters to deliver real-time monitoring and insights to help Intellihub and its customers better manage things like energy demand, solar feed-ins and peaks and troughs. Intellihub was founded four years ago and currently has more than one million meters installed. Telstra reports more than five million devices now connected to its IoT/M2M networks, including around 1.2 million devices connected to Cellular Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs). Telstra claims the largest IoT network in Australia – with around four million square kilometres of NB-IoT coverage and around three million square kilometres of LTE-M coverage.
Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) is still without frequencies for its smart meters project, despite applying to the Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) for the requisite Utility Frequency licence in the 393MHz-398.5MHz band three years ago, reports NepaliTelecom. NEA plans to install smart meters for all its six million customers in phases, a project which under the current regulatory regime would cost an annual sum of over NPR20 billion (USD165 million) in frequency charges. NEA has long argued it is entitled to the frequencies free of cost. The Ministry of Energy, Water Resources & Irrigation is trying to find a resolution by taking the matter to the Council of Ministers, while NEA has so far provided only 44,000 customers with smart meters equipped with GPRS SIM cards in a pilot phase. NEA’s Managing Director Kulman Ghising says such frequencies are allocated for free in other countries, and could be utilised as unlicensed spectrum, arguing: ‘Such frequencies come for free but NTA is seeking unreasonable fees.’
UK-based IoT services provider Pangea has announced reaching the milestone of 400 IoT partners. The company says it is enabling partners to ‘move beyond the game of undercutting [prices], to help their customers overcome real business challenges and reach tangible outcomes. All using intelligent mobile data and value-added services, like static IPs and mobile content filtering.’ Pangea adds that it connects over 200,000 endpoints across various sectors, while last year it formed an IoT/mobile data partnership with another UK operator Daisy Communications.
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