Bouygues Telecom announced this week it plans to commercial launch an Internet of Things (IoT) network in June.
From day one, the French telco’s new network will cover parts of Paris and one of its outlying suburbs, Issy-les-Moulineaux. It plans to extend coverage across the capital as well as to approximately 500 towns – including Anger, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Montpellier, Nantes, Nice and Rennes – by the end of the year.
"The Internet of Things is going to transform entire areas of our economy," said Olivier Roussat, CEO of Bouygues Telecom, in a stat ement on Thursday. "Thanks to the expertise and the infrastructures of Bouygues Telecom, we will be able to quickly offer nationwide coverage with a high-quality service."
Bouygues’ IoT network will use LoRa (long range) technology, a low-power wide area network (LPWAN) specification intended for use by wireless, battery-operated objects deployed in local, regional, national and even global networks.
Unveiled at CES 2015 in Las Vegas, LoRa runs on unlicensed spectrum and supports data rates ranging from 0.3 kbps to 50 kbps, so it is ideal for enabling smart devices to share small amounts of data over a long period of time. Indeed, LoRa devices can remain connected for up to 10 years on battery power alone.
Bouygues Telecom is a founding member of the LoRa Alliance, an industry body launched at this year’s Mobile World Congress tasked with advancing the interests of the fledgling technology.
Bouygues said LoRa has the potential to be put to use in any number of industry verticals, including the energy, automotive, logistics, agriculture, commerce, environmental and manufacturing sectors, among others.
The upcoming commercial deployment builds on trials carried out in November 2013 in Grenoble by Bouygues and its partner, LoRa chip maker Semtech.
"Its long-standing involvement in the development of our technology and its ceaseless work to improve it within the LoRa Alliance has made Bouygues Telecom one of the world’s leading experts in IoT technology," said Alain Dantec, senior vice president and general manager of Semtech. "We are now impatient to rise to the challenges of its future customers within the framework of their network rollout."
Bouygues is not the only French telco hoping to capitalise on IoT.
Last week, incumbent Orange set a target of generating revenue of €600 million from IoT and mach ine-to-machine (M2M) services by 2018.
