• New solution for private managed LoRa networks
• Deployed in a customer’s premises or offered as SaaS
• A “ready now” alternative to LTE-based IoT solutions

Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) network provider Actility announced at MWC last week that it was teaming up with Cisco to help its customers move towards digital transformation and accelerate the development of new business models based on IoT. Actility has therefore joined the Cisco Partner Ecosystem and says the collaboration will allow global service providers and other vertical industries to create added value in markets such as smart cities, connected factories and industrial IoT.

“With the Cisco IoT gateway we are ready for multi-sector deployments and location services where sensors can be localized without a GPS,” said Olivier Hersent, CTO and CEO of Actility. “Now operators have no need to wait for LTE-based IoT solutions: they can address the massive opportunities in the rapidly growing IoT market today.”

The combined offering of Cisco IoT solutions and Actility’s ThingPark wireless platform also addresses the requirements of private managed LoRa (Low Power, Long Range) wide area networks and the two companies say it can be deployed in a customer’s premises or offered as a Software as a Service model (SaaS). The addition of Cisco’s latest LoRa gateway technology to the ThingPark ecosystem should also simplify the deployment of end-to-end IoT solutions.

“Our collaboration with Actility will enable us to offer a complete LoRA LPWA-based solution to our customers and partners, and opens up IoT to an untapped market of billions of battery-powered devices,” said Vikas Butaney, general manager, IoT Connectivity Business Unit at Cisco. “LoRa’s ability to communicate elegantly without draining excessive power makes it suitable for deploying connected devices in the field that can provide actionable business insights over an extended lifetime.”

Actility and Cisco are both members of the LoRa Alliance, a non-profit organisation that supports the use of the LoRa protocol and encourages interoperability between operators. Both companies already have relationships with tier one mobile operators are are positioning this service as an “available now” alternative to new LTE-based solutions.