National Narrowband Network Co (NNN Co) and industry leader in low power-wide area networking platform, Actility have partnered to announce the roll out of Australia’s long-range, wide-area narrowband (LoRaWAN).
Announced at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the roll out of the network comes six months after the trial of the LoRaWAN technology and will be released on a project-by-project basis.
NNN Co’s CEO Rob Zagarella said:
“This agreement is a key step in NNN Co’s commercial network development as we move from a testing phase to commercial rollout of the national narrowband network. This will occur project by project across Australia, in partnership with Actility as NNN Co’s network server provider. 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 culture, the company has also designed various gateway solutions that is capable of handing different densities, including urban and rural areas.
“We know the network works and we’re on the border between proof of concept and commercial deployments. We’re preparing ourselves to access Actility’s network platform for commercial roll out.” Zagarella adds.
Partnering with Ergon Energy, both the companies have been testing the LoRaWAN technology since November, and have been working to provide a LoRaWAN narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) network.
Due to a low customer density and long distribution lines, enabling load variation, Ergon Energy was able to connect to individual households. Following the successful drive, Queensland now uses the NNN Co’s multi-cast technology combines with Actility’s platform to control hot water usage in several houses of Townsville.
According to the Zagarella, proof of concept enables the company to reach the last stage of commercialization and will involve the production of 50 demand response enabling devices (DREDs)
Zagarella concludes by saying that this challenging situation puts NNN Co. in a favorable position that enables growth in Australia and globally.
