Paris, Jan.19, 2016: SIGFOX co-founders Ludovic Le Moan and Christophe Fourtet today announced the creation of the SIGFOX Foundation, established to bring the benefits of the Internet of Things (IoT) to nonprofit, humanitarian causes around the world.
Structured around an endowment fund, the Paris-based Foundation will support programs designed to protect people and the environment, improve health care and social ties, with the contribution of the company’s network and the best-associated resources.
The announcement coincides with the news that SIGFOX, one of the leaders in Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity, had deployed its network at the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Research Station. The network in the world’s harshest climate was deployed to ensure the safety and security of the crew and its equipment during research operations at the Belgian government’s 2015-16 BELARE expedition, a press release by the company said.
This is the first time that IoT network coverage had been deployed on the continent, where electronic communication was otherwise limited to short-range radio and satellite communication.
“The BELARE expedition is just one example of the many, many ways that SIGFOX can support programs that protect people and the environment, improve health care and establish social ties, with its network and the best associated resources from partnering with startups and device-makers,” said Le Moan, SIGFOX Chief Executive Officer.
In 2015, the company added 6 countries to the now generally used low power wide area network (LPWA) that it created. It also built the SIGFOX ecosystem to more than 1,000 partners, ranging from network operators to component manufacturers, integrators and platform developers. In the process, at extended coverage to more than 1.2 million square kilometers (460,000 square miles) and contracted with customers to connect 7 million objects and devices.
About the Foundation
Marion Moreau, a former journalist who specialised in new technologies, will head the Foundation. Besides Le Moan and Fourtet, the foundation board includes Géraldine Le Meur, a serial entrepreneur based in San Francisco, and co-founder of LeWeb Conference.
Le Moan and Fourtet said they were focused intensively on the future – the future of the IoT. The vision of building a global standard of connectivity would also serve as a guide for the activities of the Foundation, which will pursue the same goal to address major issues at large scale.
“We don’t want to save only one tree, but all trees in a connected forest. We are confident we will bring a high value because of our technology and skills,” said Le Moan.
“We still aspire to change the world through the awesome potential of the Internet of Things, but we can’t do this on our own,” adds Fourtet, the company’s Chief Science Officer. “The SIGFOX Foundation will work with the best partners – NGOs, industrials, startups – to bring real solutions that save forests, not just trees, with millions of connected objects communicating as needed with very little energy.”
About SIGFOX’s Plan
And while that kind of growth is the company’s overriding focus, Le Moan, 52, occasionally remembers the past five years, and the beginning of the journey.
Both Le Moan and Fourtet were of the view that the physical world would be redefined, understood in a different way, because of the vast amount of information provided by the IoT and the SIGFOX network. That would ensure multiple benefits around the world, including, for example, the ability to prevent environmental damage, to predict natural disasters and to improve everyday life for people in every culture.
After the company’s launch in 2011, the dream caught on with what Le Moan now jokingly refers to as “only a couple of engineers, cable men and other geniuses” employed by the company at the time. “They were all passionate about allowing tiny devices to send small radio signals as far as possible, as it was done in the submarines mobilized during WW II,” he says. “SIGFOX traces the origins of its ultra-narrow band (UNB) technology to back then.”
That dream now encompasses ways to extend the benefits of the Internet of Things to organizations that are working to solve global problems, but that don’t have the technological means or the money to access it themselves. That is why say, Le Moan and Fourtet, they decided to create the SIGFOX Foundation.
Image Credit: SIGFOX Foundation