Actility reveals ThingPark solution supporting seamless integration of 3GPP and LoRaWAN™ technologies

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The Actility Newsroom

Actility reveals ThingPark solution supporting seamless integration of 3GPP and LoRaWAN™ technologies

Actility, the industry leader in Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN), today announces support for 3GPP LTE-M and NB-IoT technology within the ThingPark IoT software suite, allowing service providers to seamlessly deploy and manage networks combining LoRaWAN and NB-IoT LPWA using a single OSS/BSS, device management solution and data exposure interface. Visitors to Actility’s booth at MWC (8.0C3) will be able to see the seamlessly integrated dual-technology network in action, delivering data from LoRaWAN and 3GPP connected sensors through the same platform to a cloud host.

“Service providers are facing big challenges in integrating IoT devices on the required massively large scale, explains Actility SVP of Products, Boris Lacroix.  “At the same time as device ARPU is decreasing rapidly, the large number of transactions is increasing IT cost, OSS/BSS costs and MME/HSS licensing fees are dominating the business case, and expensive EPC upgrades are killing the early MTC revenue. Something has to change, and we believe our ThingPark EPC connector is that game changer. It will enable integrated networks, allowing operators to monetize existing R8-R11 networks and evolve towards future R13 deployments.”

The solution is available within Actility’s ThingPark IoT platform. Key features include: unified device management, with single layer provisioning for LoRaWAN and 3GPP Iot devices and automated SIM provisioning; integrated OSS/BSS offering unified connectivity management services and unified LPWA billing, traffic shaping and policy management; and data exposure through a single API, including metadata.  The result is a seamlessly integrated LPWA network powered by ThingPark, offering features such as service activation and role management, IoT offer creation and subscriber management, and order management.

“This is a key evolution for our platform,” says Actility CEO Mike Mulica, “effectively allowing our service provider customers to immediately expand their LPWA commercial services to LTE-M and NB-IoT, in addition to the existing LoRaWAN network, and always offer best in class LPWA technology going forward for all IoT use cases. We’ve always believed that LPWA was not an either-or choice between LoRaWAN and 3GPP technology, but that both are needed and will work in parallel, sometimes together, to deliver best-fit solutions for specific use cases. We’ve been inspired to turn that belief into a concrete solution within the ThingPark platform, and we’re ready to deploy it for our customers.”

NNNCo and Actility ready to begin rollout of Australia’s first nationwide industrial IoT network

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The Actility Newsroom

NNNCo and Actility ready to begin rollout of Australia’s first nationwide industrial IoT network

Actility, the industry leader in low power wide area networking, and the National Narrowband Network Co, Australia’s leading LORaWAN network operator, today signed a contract to partner in deploying a national LORaWAN network to catalyse the growth of industrial IoT across Australia. The agreement marks the successful completion of a testing and proof of concept phase, which has demonstrated that NNNCo and Actility can deliver together the key functionality required by customers, including NNNCo’s innovative granular multicast technology, which is today unique in the LPWA domain.

“This agreement is a key step in NNNCo’s commercial network development as we move from a testing phase to commercial roll out of the national narrowband network (NNN). This will occur project-by-project across Australia, in partnership with Actility as NNNCo’s network server provider, “ explains NNNCo Founder and CEO Rob Zagarella. “The big use cases in Australia are water, agriculture, energy monitoring and control, soil moisture, rainfall detection, cattle tracking, building management and people movement. Given Australia’s size and climate, we’ve also had to design in various architectures and gateway solutions to handle many different types of topographies and densities, from built-up urban centres to rural landscapes,” he adds.

“We’re delighted that NNNCo has chosen Actility to support this large-scale network that will enable a wide range of applications across Australia,” says Actility Founder and CTO Olivier Hersent. “Our extensive experience of carrier-grade network solutions, gained through powering almost half the national LPWA networks around the world, will help us support NNNCo through the unique challenges of what is, after all, a continental roll-out as well as a national one. But we have also been very impressed by the innovation we’ve seen from NNNCo in the course of our pilot programme together, and we believe that will be a powerful contribution to the worldwide LoRaWAN ecosystem.”

NNNCo is Australia’s LoRaWAN network operator, dedicated to building and operating a National Narrowband Network for IoT as an end-to-end scalable service offering over a shared network. The company is working with some of the world’s leading energy and water utilities, technology providers and innovators to roll out large-scale, carrier-grade network solutions. Over the past 12 months, NNNCO has become established as a world-leading organisation in understanding the scope, and the limits, of LoRaWAN solutions. The company’s approach has been to focus on a number of key verticals that it believes will have the biggest impact, such as energy, water and smart cities, and it has gone in deep on those verticals with end-to-end solutions.

The new contract comes as the joint NNNCo/Actility trial deployment with Ergon Energy reaches a key milestone, ready to evolve towards a full-scale commercial solution. The testing/PoC stage has been geared towards preparing for the deployment of large-scale network roll-outs that can handle the challenges. NNNCo is now in the final stage of the Ergon Energy proof of concept, which includes 50 production-ready DREDS (Demand Response Enabling Devices).

“We know the network works and we’re on the border between proof of concept and commercial deployments,” explains Zagarella. ”We’re preparing ourselves to access Actility’s network server for commercial roll-out. It’s exciting to be working with a global partner like Actility which is providing network servers to other large operators around the world. Throughout our PoCs NNNCo has had a great working relationship with Actility from a development perspective, to ensure we’re prepared for the commercial deployments such as smart cities, utilities, water and agriculture.”

“This contract is a clear demonstration of how the momentum behind LoRaWAN is building quickly in the Asia-Pacific region,” comments Actility’s Peter Hogewoning, Director of Sales for APAC. “With LoRaWAN already well established in Europe, ground-breaking national and large-scale network roll-outs all around the Pacific Basin are going to be a highlight for the LPWA ecosystem in 2017.”
What is LoRa and LoRaWAN white paper techniical overview, benfits and use cases

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