CityVerve: A smarter Manchester springs to life

Northern European early adopters

It’s been a bit embarrassing for me, being based in the UK, seeing how readily other Actility customers in other countries in my Northern European region, especially around the Baltic Sea, are adopting LoRaWAN and rolling out national networks. But at last, LoRaWAN is getting more traction in the UK for Actility through our partnership with Cisco Systems.

Inspiring Manchester

How many people know that Actility, working with Cisco, is the power behind the LoRaWAN network deployed for the CityVerve in Manchester? CityVerve is a collaboration of the brightest minds and pioneering technologies to help create a smart, innovative, inspiring Manchester.

The smart city project brings together the latest IoT technologies, deployed at city scale to deliver transformative benefits: new business and jobs for Manchester; better healthcare, transport, and environment; and more engaged and empowered citizens.

“Generally speaking, from a Cisco perspective, I can’t think of any better place to be in the UK. An old saying says that Manchester and Mancunians are all about getting things done and that’s absolutely true.” Ian Kennedy, VP of technical operations in EMEA at Cisco

As shared in a UKTN documentary a year ago, Cisco is supporting open-innovation with local start-ups to participate in the £10 million funded CityVerve.

Mainstream UK adoption

2018 is going to be an exciting year in the UK for IoT as it moves into mainstream adoption and the programme is a fantastic way to take advantage of some funding and mentoring to deliver solutions that deliver real value for UK plc and the public.

Seeing how readily countries like Finland and Sweden are accelerating their LoRaWAN deployments with ThingPark, following the course that France, Belgium, The Netherlands and Switzerland took with Actility over 2 years, ago it seems that the UK is now at a tipping point. All the indicators look good.