These days, one of the companies actively involved with the business of the Internet of Things (IoT) is undoubtedly the French company SIGFOX.
SIGFOX claims to be the first and only company providing global cellular connectivity for the IoT, fully dedicated to low-throughput communications. For the layman, this means a cellular network just like say a Vodafone or AT&T service but instead of mobile phones, this one will cater exclusively for “things” (smoke detectors, thermostats, dog collars) that are connected to the Internet.
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Of late, the French company has been in the news for having decided to demonstrate a similar wireless network in San Francisco, USA. Prior to that, as reported by this website, SIGFOX had tied up with the United Kingdom-based communications infrastructure company Arqiva,wherein the latter will build and run a national IoT network, using SIGFOX technology.
With such scorching moves, we decided to interview Ludovic le Moan, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of SIGFOX, by email, on a host of issues related to his company.
Here are the excerpts:
Q) Until now, how many countries have been added to the SIGFOX network?
A) We have nation-wide coverage in France, Spain & and the Netherlands, and a rollout is underway in the UK. In addition, we have about 10 cities covered, including Moscow, Munich & Milan.
Q) Is there an estimate on the number of devices that have been added on to the SIGFOX global network so far?
A) There are more than 5 million device connections booked and around 200,000 are live. Our website offers a running tally of messages sent over the SIGFOX network: well over 100 million, and growing by the second.
Q) What’s in the immediate future for SIGFOX? What’s next after UK?
A) On the network side, we will roll out in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley shortly, and we are in discussions with partners to extend the network in the US. We will also shortly be signing with new partners for rollout in other countries. On the subscription side, we will be announcing more customers over several countries, some with very large deployments.
Q) What is your opinion on the huge security challenge this represents because security is one of the biggest worries around IoT?
A) Security is key to IoT solutions. From a SIGFOX perspective, the radio link and the SIGFOX Cloud provide a very high level of security, the most important factor being that SIGFOX does not decrypt the data transported on our network. Only the customers can understand the data flowing from their devices to their applications, and the messages are sent in the customers’ proprietary data format. For applications only requiring the transmission of sensor data, SIGFOX can provide a mono-directional connection, which of course improves security since in those cases it is impossible to attack the devices.
Q) How many SIGFOX Network Operator partners do you have so far?
A) Four: UK, Spain, the Netherlands and Russia.
Q) Since the SIGFOX tech works on radio will it not suffer because of signal drops due to blocking by physical objects?
A) All radio technologies can theoretically be blocked. This includes WiFi, 2/3/4G, Bluetooth, etc. SIGFOX does, however, have excellent capacities in regards to penetrating obstacles, including the ability to go through physical obstacles that not even 2/3/4G can penetrate.
Q) Can you explain in simple terms for the average reader how the entire process works? Eg: From A-B-C-D….the steps involved in signing up for the SIGFOX network right till the end.
A) An end customer does not see SIGFOX. It is out-of-the-box. Through its global network, SIGFOX sells connectivity to companies who build the connected devices. Those companies will integrate a SIGFOX communication module (available from the world’s leading silicon and module vendors) and then purchase device subscriptions from SIGFOX. They can then either pay per year or bundle connectivity to avoid recurring subscription costs.
From an application point of view, the SIGFOX connectivity solution functions as follows:
- SIGFOX compatible modems are integrated within the physical objects by our certified partner network
- The objects instruct the modems to send messages whenever and wherever needed
- The transmitted data is picked up by SIGFOX transceivers, and routed to our managed service
- The SIGFOX servers verify the data integrity and route the messages to the application’s IT system
Le Moan’s CV: He helped build a global cellular network dedicated to low-throughput communication for connected objects. Previously, he had co-founded the B2C mobile startup Goojet, now repositioned as scoop.it. Prior to that, he founded Anyware Technologies, a company specialized in M2M solutions, which he sold to Wavecom in 2007.
An engineer, Le Moan is a serial entrepreneur who also founded, and chairs TIC Valley, a Toulouse, France, association that offers mentoring, networking and other support for more than a dozen startups in information and communication technology (ICT).
Image Credit: SIGFOX
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