New LoRaWAN™ network for IoT in Saudi Arabia from Actility and machinestalk

Despite numerous telcos announcing support for LTE Cat 1, M1 and NB-IoT (see recent techblog posts), LoRa WAN continues to gain market traction.  Last December, Tata Communications and Semtech announced they had worked together to deploy 35 IoT proofs-of-concept (PoCs) LoRa WANs in several India cities. The PoCs cover a wide array of applications, including sensors for remotely monitoring air conditioners and safety deposit boxes, energy management systems used to optimize the use of electricity, gas and water, and multiple smart buildings and smart city applications.

On May 22nd, LPWAN provider Actility and machinestalk (an IoT solutions provider), announced they are working together to begin the roll-out of a large-scale LoRaWAN network in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).

The partnership will combine the expertise of Actility with machinestalk’s market-leading IoT platform and solutions and will enable cutting-edge efficient and energy-saving IoT solutions and geolocation applications in the fields of smart cities and Industries, oil and gas, supply chain and logistics.

Managing Director Eng. Nawaaf Alshalani said, “We at machinestalk always seek to build and present an integrated ecosystem to our clients. As a result, we are collaborating with Actility to implement LoRaWAN network and LPWAN technologies, which will give an added value to the region as a whole, and enable the grow of the IoT market in the Kingdom in line with the 2030 Vision. Our studies and research indicate that 11% of IoT connections will use LPWAN technologies that serve applications and solutions that require low-cost, multi-year battery operation, long-range connectivity, and geolocation. We are proud of our partnership with Actility, a leading company in this field and a developer of ThingPark, the leading IoT platform. This collaboration will help us to provide better IoT services and solutions for various private, government, and semi-government sectors.” Eng. Nawaf added.

“We’re delighted to be working with machinestalk to begin the rollout of a LoRaWAN network in Saudi Arabia,” says Actility CEO Mike Mulica. “As a provider of IoT solutions for over a decade, machinestalk really understands the needs of the key industrial sectors in the Kingdom. Not only oil and gas, which are clearly pivotal, but also other applications in the new domains being grown in response to the very forward looking Saudi Vision 2030. We believe that a this LPWAN communications network will be a powerful platform to accelerate the the implementation of that vision.”

machinestalk is planning to use the LoRaWAN infrastructure to facilitate the implementation of IoT solutions in industry sectors including oil and gas, smart city solutions, M2M, and industrial applications. For the oil and gas industry, the network will support services including smart level monitoring and smart metering, improving the end to end supply chain. From the smart city perspective, machinestalk will deploy services including smart lighting solution, environmental monitoring, smart parking systems and waste management solutions resulting in more green, efficient and connected cities in Saudi Arabia and the MENA region.

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