The UK firm will initially deploy 50 LoRaWAN base stations to support digital startups and enterprises
Digital Catapult announced the deployment of a LoRaWAN network across London in order to allow digital startups and small- to medium-sized enterprises to embrace business opportunities in the internet of things (IoT) field.
Under the Digital Catapult Things Connected support program, the company will initially provide 50 LoRaWAN base stations. The program will provide a testbed to support evolving IoT technologies in its roll out. LoRaWAN is the first phase of the testbed and additional low-power wide area network (LPWAN) technologies will be included as the network develops, Digital Catapult said.
The company will work in collaboration with BT, Future Cities Catapult, Everynet, Beecham Research, AllThingsTalk, BRE, Imperial College London, King’s College London, UCL and Queen Mary University of London.
The Things Connected program aims to allow startups and businesses to innovate and experiment in several areas including infrastructure provision, traffic and transport services, energy management and environmental sensing.
“Digital Catapult Things Connected will help to drive business innovation by embracing Internet of Things technologies across London. By continuing to make our city smart and connected, we are showing that London is open as we work to improve the lives and wellbeing of many by tackling the big issues we face in healthcare, transport and energy,” London’s Deputy Mayor for Business, Rajesh Agrawal, said.
Digital Catapult said that the aim is to replicate this experience in a number of UK regions to support local IoT sector growth. “Things Connected is starting in London but we want it to cover the UK. To capture more of the digital dividend in the UK economy, we need to accelerate the adoption of the internet of things,” Digital Catapult’s CEO Jeremy Silver, said.
Tiscali inks agreement with Huawei to launch TD-LTE network in Italy
In other EMEA news, Italian broadband provider Tiscali has signed an agreement with Chinese vendor Huawei for the deployment of a TD-LTE network in the 3.5GHz band.
The contract has a total value of 40 million euros ($45 million). The Italian ISP said that the new network will offer broadband speeds of up to 100Mbps, scalable to 1Gbps in the future, and will eventually cover 13 million households across the country.
Tiscali aims to commercially launch the new LTE network in the last quarter of 2016.
