Tele2 IoT has signed a cooperation agreement with fellow Swedish provider TH1NG to offer ‘a qualitative and secure IoT platform to new and existing Tele2 IoT customers’. Onur Kasaba, Head of IoT at Tele2, said: ‘A collaboration like this gives us great opportunities to help our customers further in their quest to create a complete IoT solution with Tele2 IoT connection and TH1NG and their platform IoT Open.’ Klas Westholm, CEO of TH1NG, noted: ‘With our IoT platform, IoT Open, we enable a variety of new services in several segments, for example in industry, the real estate sector and smart communities.’ Tele2 IoT manages connections in most countries worldwide via cooperation agreements with more than 500 telecom operators.
AT&T Mexico has partnered Nokia to deploy the ‘first industrial-grade LTE private network in a maritime terminal in Mexico’. The network solution at the APM Terminals facility in Puerto Progreso, Yucatan, uses the Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (DAC ) platform, delivering high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity, securely connecting hundreds of workers, sensors, equipment, and vehicles across an area of 11.5 hectares, while enabling future use cases such as remote and autonomous crane operations within the piers and yards. Gabriel Fernandez, Innovation & IoT Director at AT&T Mexico, said: ‘Private networks are increasingly important for businesses – especially in Industry 4.0 environments with a lot of connected devices, where privacy, data control and performance are all crucial.’
Kyrgyzstan’s Nur Telecom (O!) has launched a new campaign promoting ‘Smart Device’ M2M/IoT tariffs for businesses, facilitating device connectivity, management and data analysis, with tariff durations ranging from 30 to 360 days. The cellco’s website highlights capabilities for monitoring and analysing data on ‘temperature, pressure, speed, geolocation, completed actions, and more,’ plus possibilities to ‘control employees or vehicles’ and monitor equipment performance, fuel consumption, etc., supporting prevention of accidents and the optimisation of processes and costs.
Low-Earth Orbit (LEO ) satellite operator Globalstar and mobile satellite service provider Globalsat have developed an IoT solution to monitor remote renewable energy stations in Latin America, with an initial agreement to deploy 23,000 devices throughout the region. The partners claim the solution will drastically reduce maintenance costs and allow clients to obtain daily data, including information on equipment status and energy consumption. The solution will also provide monitoring visibility as a means of theft prevention.
China Mobile and New Tianjin Steel Group announced the first commercial use of the Huawei 5G 8T distributed Massive MIMO solution in the steel industry, displaying a cell uplink throughput of up to 1Gbps, with stable latency of 20ms at 99.99%. 5G connectivity supports production equipment and environmental data collection with onsite HD video to ensure accurate remote control, making it possible to implement unmanned operations for bridge cranes and other machinery, the partners reported. 8T distributed Massive MIMO provides 5G networks with fast transmission and huge uplink throughput while avoiding latency ‘jitters’ during the long-distance movement of connected devices – essential for ensuring consistency of latency-critical remote-control services.
Canadian telco Telus has expanded its healthcare operations with the completion of a CAD2.3 billion (USD1.75 billion) takeover of LifeWorks, which provides digital and in-person solutions supporting mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing. The company says the deal solidifies TELUS Health ‘as one of the largest companies providing digital-first health and wellness services and solutions’ by expanding its footprint to thousands of corporate clients in over 160 countries and 50 million individuals worldwide. Telus CEO Darren Entwistle said that the expanded division ‘will provide employers across the globe with world-leading digital health and wellness solutions for their employees that are convenient, innovative and highly effective’, leveraging Telus’ digital and data analytics capabilities and providing complementary end-to-end solutions supported by Telus’ network infrastructure and its subsidiary Telus International’s proven expertise in digital transformation. Entwistle added that the merger was an ‘opportunity to leverage our expansive TELUS and TELUS International footprint and client base spanning 32 countries’.
Vodafone Group and Topcon Positioning Group are developing a mass-market precise positioning system to locate IoT devices, machinery and vehicles with a greater degree of accuracy than using only individual global navigation satellites systems (GNSS ), with the aim of supporting mass adoption of Vehicle to Anything (V2X) technology. A press release stated: ‘Vehicles, scooters, and even robot lawn mowers can be securely monitored in real-time to within a few centimetres when connected to Vodafone’s global IoT network and using technology from Topcon which corrects inaccuracies from navigation satellite signals. Location accuracy is improved from a few metres to just centimetres using Topcon’s dense European network of thousands of GNSS reference stations, especially when vehicles and devices are fitted with suitable antennas and receiver equipment.’ Vodafone is now inviting select customers to join pilot activities in Germany, Spain and the UK, starting this month. The companies aim to test the ‘Vodafone GNSS Corrections’ service using a wide variety of devices connected to Vodafone’s global IoT network – one of the largest with more than 150 million connections – and its pan-European network which covers twelve countries.
Kerlink and Japanese IT firm Takumi Shoji Co have formed a partnership to promote, sell and support Kerlink’s LoRaWAN-based solutions for the Japanese IoT market. Takumi Shoji representative Shin Nohara said: ‘Kerlink has been a core member of the LoRa Alliance since its inception and has grown to become the global leader in industrial-grade LoRaWAN gateways. As a Kerlink distributor, we will do our best to provide high quality LoRaWAN-based solutions and answer the needs of the rapidly expanding IoT market in Japan.’
Brazilian telecoms regulator Anatel has upheld a decision of the Competition Superintendence which ruled that Algar Telecom violated competition rules by providing ‘permanent roaming’ for IoT/M2M services on the network of rival Claro. As reported by TeleTime, Anatel rejected an appeal against the ruling from Algar, which had been offering services via a ‘multi-operator’ M2M chip using Claro’s network in areas where its own network did not reach (and where it was not licensed to operate). Anatel authorised Claro to suspend Algar’s activities, and gave the latter 60 days to inform customers that it will no longer offer any type of service with a ‘multi-operator’ chip.
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