IoT and M2M company Actility is to open an IoT research lab in Paris, where it will assist developers in testing and launching connected devices.
Working with established technology companies and startups, the lab will enable its residents to access 3GPP-compatible networks, modules, and sensors. The facility will use Actility’s ThingPark wireless platform.
Olivier Hersent, CEO of Actility, said, “Our IoT lab in Paris will offer local network coverage for testing LTE-M, NB-IoT, and LoRaWAN devices.
“The lab is open to anyone interested in building applications and use cases, or testing their devices/modules and real-world integration with cloud platforms such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and IBM Bluemix.”
The Paris lab is one of several such facilities that the company plans to open this year. It wants to connect IoT specialists in every part of the world, it said.
Rise of low-power IoT
The research centre’s focus on low-power networks will give application and end-to-end solution developers the resources to research and develop sustainable IoT devices.
Actility will also help resident developers bring their designs to market and promote them. The lab will generate “use cases leveraging both LoRaWAN and LTE side by side in a real deployment within a lab environment”, said the company in a statement.
Andy Odgers, founder and CEO of agile mobile specialist Quortus, a founding partner in the lab, said Actility’s lab will be a unique resource for developers focusing on low-power wireless devices.
“Actility’s IoT Lab is exactly the kind of initiative developers need to help them deliver on the vast potential of low-power wireless access technologies,” he said.
“At Quortus, we’re already seeing deployments in use cases such as factory IoT that use 4G LTE in concert with 5G-aligned core technologies like network slicing, to deliver the benefits of LPWA today.”
Odgers added: “The flexibility and scalability offered by current and future network architectures means that innovation is restricted only by the limits of the developer’s imagination.
“We’re proud to be chosen for this key role in the IoT lab, and look forward to a close and ongoing co-operation with Actility and users of the lab.”
An important market
Other launch partners added their voices in support of the launch.
Scott Nelson, VP of product at M2M communications specialist Digi International, said the lab capitalises on an important and growing market.
“The IoT marketplace needs LPWAN solutions that leverage hardware-software integration to provide connectivity and networking for a range of applications,” he said.
“These networks offer answers to the challenges of customer adoption, including operating costs, connectivity, breadth of coverage, and power consumption.”
Stefan Lindvall, CEO of IoT data communications provider MultiTech, added: “MultiTech and Actility share a desire to simplify the development, testing, and deployment of IoT solutions around the globe.
“We are pleased to support the Actility IoT lab in Paris and enable the next generation of end-to-end IoT application development with our industry-leading portfolio of licensed and unlicensed LPWA hardware.”
Internet of Business says
Just as the IoT brings smart devices and services together in the cloud, on the edge, and in the distributed core, so it is also bringing vendors and organisations together in smart partnerships to help develop real-world use cases – and make sure the technologies work. We wish this new global labs initiative every success.
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