More than 300 skyscrapers line the streets of Hong Kong, and many of them are lit, heated and cooled by connected infrastructure that enables remote monitoring and management of in-building systems. Hong Kong’s Pixel Networks, one of the companies providing connectivity services for smart buildings, has recently announced a LoRaWAN wireless network that it says will connect IoT devices throughout the city. Pixel’s partners are Actility, which provides infrastructure and software for LoRa networks, and Cisco, which is an investor in Actility.
LoRa, an abbreviation for long range, is a radio technology that uses unlicensed spectrum to transmit data over long distances using very low power radio equipment. The core technology was developed by chip designer Semtech, which now hopes to license the technology to other chip makers.
The Hong Kong network will leverage LoRa WAN gateway technology along with Actility’s ThingPark Wireless platform and Cisco’s IoT solutions. Pixel wants to enable virtual private LoRaWAN networks, which can extend the its public network infrastructure by using the customer’s own outdoor or indoor gateways.
Private IoT networks are in demand in the enterprise environment because they can be more secure and cost-effective than public networks. Many enterprises aggregate IoT data traffic using a LoRa gateway, and then use cellular networks or Ethernet to backhaul the traffic to the public internet so that data can be analyzed in the cloud.
“I’m sure we’re going to see some real pioneering development in Hong Kong and we’re delighted to be able to provide a tried and tested platform on which Pixel can build a stand-out offering and create ground-breaking solutions for their customers,” said Actility CEO Mike Mulica.
“Hong Kong is a highly competitive and cutting edge city, and at the same time an open and thriving market always on the lookout for ways to improve efficiency in day to day operations,” said Pixel CEO Kirill Nosov. “We think that makes Hong Kong a very good fit with our core business of providing fully integrated hardware and software solutions, ready to use on day one. We also think that this dynamic city environment will be a great place to develop solutions that will be easily adapted to other international markets.”
