Thinxtra gets $10m investment for IoT rollout

Australia’s Thinxtra has secured a cornerstone investment from the government-backed Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) to complete the deployment of its first nationwide IoT-dedicated network.

Thinxtra is deploying networks based on the Sigfox low power wide area (LPWA) networking technology in Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong.

The company will use the up to $10 million investment from the CEFC to complete the deployment of its networks in Australia and New Zealand covering 95% of the population by year end.

Sigfox IoT networks are designed to dramatically improve energy efficiency and productivity by allowing IoT devices to send low bandwidth messages over long distances.

Potential applications include smart grid meter readings, GPS and measurements of quality, temperature, movement, access, vibration and power status.

“We will be the low power wide area network of choice for IoT and we’re aiming for 17 million objects connected by the end of 2022,” Thinxtra CEO Loic Barancourt said.

“Thinxtra’s IoT network provides the lowest device-to-cloud connectivity, at the lowest level of energy consumption, and is complementary to Bluetooth, RFID, 2G, 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi technologies.”

He said more than 150 local businesses in a range of industries have already signed up to leverage the IoT network.

Examples include smart meter water service companies using the network to detect leaks, smart farming companies using sensors to provide daily data on soil and weather patterns and smart logistics providers using cold chain monitoring trackers to trace food shipments.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/sdecoret

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