French startup Sigfox, a provider of communications services for the IoT, and Asian IoT network operator UnaBiz have entered into a partnership to provide IoT connectivity to Taiwan’s electronics manufacturing industry.
Last month, UnaBiz collaborated with Engie and Sigfox to deploy an IoT network in Singapore, joining the team as the exclusive network operator for Sigfox in Singapore. Now, the IoT player has merged its efforts to lead the deployment in Taiwan and aims to reach full coverage in early 2018. Taiwan’s six largest urban areas, accounting for half of the population, will have coverage by mid-2017.
“This extension to Taiwan is key in our regional development strategy, because Taiwan has the largest ecosystem of devices and solutions to accelerate the adoption of IoT use cases globally,” said Henri Bong, CEO, UnaBiz.
Additionally, the French IoT player has also partnered with industrial computer manufacturer Advantech to tap Taiwan’s IoT market.
“Sigfox’s network technology is inexpensive, consumes little power and works over long distances. It uses unlicensed radio spectrum for its service, so it doesn’t require permission from government to operate around the world,” said Chaney Ho, President, Advantech.
Ludovic Le Moan, CEO, Sigfox, said:
This collaboration between Taiwanese electronics companies, which are among the most competitive and efficient in the world, and Sigfox will strengthen the Sigfox ecosystem as it speeds learning and the implementation of IoT design and use cases.
This is reportedly the first of several partnerships between Sigfox and manufacturing players in the Taiwanese ecosystem. With this roll-out, Taiwan is the fourth economy in the Asia Pacific region to deploy Sigfox’s IoT connectivity platform, bringing the number of countries to 23 globally.
The IoT solutions provider has been aggressively expanding in the Americas, aiming to be in 100 U.S. cities by the end of 2016. Last month, it joined hands with Ayyeka, a US-based technology company developing Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) solutions to enable simple data collection to allow for increased operational performance, ensuring regulatory compliance.