KPN, Orange and Swisscom are part of a consortium that on Tuesday invested US$25 million in Paris-based Internet of Things (IoT) specialist Actility.
Chinese device manufacturer Foxconn, venture capitalist firms Ginko Ventures and Truffle Capital, and private equity firm Idinvest Partners were also part of the investor group.
Actility said the funds will accelerate its go-to-market strategy for ThingPark, its IoT network and service platform. ThingPark is based on the LoRaWAN standard for long-range, low power networks, and aims to get new IoT services targeted at any industry vertical up and running in less than one month.
"ThingPark provides the technology to connect both long range and low power sensors over unlicensed ISM (industrial, scientific, and medical) band spectrum, allowing low cost and fast rollout of IoT networks for a wide range of IoT applications," said Olivier Hersent, Founder, CEO and CTO, Actility.
"We are delighted to have secured the backing of such prominent communications industry leaders," he said.
"The Internet of Things is an extremely promising new market and it is important for Orange to support the start-ups and developers who are currently working on services that will become part of our future," said Pierre Louette, deputy CEO of Orange and head of Orange Digital Ventures, the French incumbent’s venture capitalist division.
Indeed, operators the world over are taking an interest in low power, long range IoT providers like Actility.
SigFox, also based in France, in February attracted $115 million of investment from Telefonica, SK Telecom and NTT DoCoMo, among others.
On Monday, Samsung’s venture capital arm, Samsung Ventures, joined the list of investors in SigFox. The South Korean electronics giant will also integrate SigFox’s IoT protocol into its ARTIK open IoT platform, which is designed to enable faster and simpler development of IoT applications.
