Amazon Web Services adds weight to LoRa Alliance
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has joined the LoRa Alliance board, adding weight to the movement alongside other new recruits including US cable company Charter Communications, German utility Netze BW, and US LoRaWAN operator Senet. They join existing board members Actility, Alibaba, Cisco, MachineQ (Comcast), Kerlink, Orange, Sagemcom, Semtech, STMicroelectronics, and Tencent. AWS says it is seeking to accelerate standards development within the LoRa Alliance and promote growth of the technology, which to date has been slower than advocates had hoped.
Vodafone Spain activates 5G network in 21 cities
Vodafone Spain has activated its 5G network in a total of 21 cities across the country, expanding on the initial six. The operator has denied that the Covid-19 crisis has delayed its investment even though the Spanish government in March postponed a planned auction of 5G spectrum. The service, currently offered in the 3.5 GHz band, is now available in Alicante, Murcia, Palma de Mallorca, Valladolid, Benidorm and Badajoz.
Trump administration tries to lure chip foundries to build US plants
As the US government extended the sanctions against selling components to Huawei for another year, it is also said to be in negotiations with chip manufacturers – including the world’s largest foundry, TSMC of Taiwan – to build new plants in the USA. Intel is reported to have been in talks with the Department of Defense about the potential construction of a commercial foundry to make the US industry less reliant on Asian sources of supply. And TSMC was said to be talks with the Department of Commerce about building a US factory. There is also the possibility that Samsung might expand its foundry operations in the US, where it has a factory in Austin, Texas. TSMC said it was “actively evaluating all the suitable locations, including in the USA”. Among its US customers are Apple and Qualcomm.
Puloli launches Qualcomm-based modules for Industrial IoT
US-based private NB (Narrowband)-IoT network operator Puloli is offering modules based on Qualcomm’s multi-mode 9205 LTE modem to critical infrastructure industries, on an as-a-service basis. This will exploit the paired 1 MHz chunk of spectrum, providing 2 MHz in total, secured by the San Francisco-based startup for operation in Florida in July 2019. Puloli is targeting utilities and other critical infrastructure industries with its network-as-a-service model, claiming up to 25 miles of NB-IoT coverage from tower sites.
u-blox modules adopted for Australian smart water meter trial
u-blox, a Swiss provider of wireless positioning and communication technologies, has announced that its stand-alone Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and cellular modules for LPWA (low power wide area) applications are being used in an Australian trial of mesh-networked water meters. The modules are being used for logging the data and the significance is that current efforts to replace manual water meter reading with automatic internet based measurement have tended to use either use propriety RF protocols, or direct cellular connections. There is also significance in that companies like u-blox have struggled financially because growth rates in the LPWAN market have been slower than expected. Such endorsements will help a company whose modules have generally performed well in the field.
Intel Capital keeps its feet in both US and China camps
Intel risks being placed in an impossible position if the US/China technology stand-off continues – on one hand, it is a flagship for the US hi-tech industry, and at the heart of moves to build a homegrown 5G platform; on the other, it does not want to jeopardize access to the biggest 5G market, China, or to its many investments, partners and customers there. It is notable that, in the latest round of investments by its Intel Capital arm, three of the 11 start-ups are Chinese (along with seven from California and one from Israel). Intel Capital has distributed $132m in total to these companies, and said the round had focused on “artificial intelligence, autonomous computing and integrated circuit design”.