French Company Building a Mobile Internet Just For Things

holy_calamity writes "France now has a dedicated cellular data network just for Internet-of-Things devices, and the company that built it is rolling out the technology elsewhere, says MIT Technology Review. SigFox's network is slower than a conventional cellular data network, but built using technology able to make much longer range links and operate on unlicensed spectrum. Those features are intended to allow the service to be cheap enough for low cost sensors on energy infrastructure and many other places to make sense, something not possible on a network shared with smartphones and other consumer devices."

Comments

Goodie!

[sgt scrub]

I'm going to start counting download speeds in 15 bits/sec/hz now so I'll be ready for when it hits Texas.

So, what's the cute trick?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Hmm... Long range, works on unlicensed spectrum, low power and cheap for client devices. How, exactly, are they planning on keeping other people(either competing operators or individuals) from setting up their own gateway hardware and skipping the delightful world of the cellular data plan model and having their every device phoning home to an untrusted 3rd party?

Do they have some sort of remarkable improvement over current low-power/low-speed RF links(zigbee, bluetooth, and friends) that is patented, proprietary, and only client chipsets are for sale, with base stations remaining in-house? If so, do they seriously plan to avoid the scrap heap of ghastly, non-interoperable unlicensed band RF links? If not, what is the new element that allows them to achieve the impressive range numbers where presently available low power links(especially if the ISM band is noisy) tend to be pretty lousy, and worse if you need to use omnidirectional antennas and deal with buildings and other clutter?

If they can perform as promised, this seems like it would have to be based on some very neat RF tricks; but I have to wonder what sorts of hobbling they will be doing to maintain their subscriber base on a technology that runs in unlicensed spectrum...

Re:So, what's the cute trick?

[timeOday]

The cute trick is that this technology is extremely slow, as in, low bandwidth, per TFA. We are talking 100 bps. (Not 100 kilobytes per second, but 100 bits per second).

So, no, nobody is dumping their cellular data plan for this. But for a weather station, or "where is the bus right now?", or burglar alarms, it could be interesting.

The main "problem" I see is that more expensive, more capable networks (cellular and wifi) are already so pervasive.

Re:So, what's the cute trick?

[TooMuchToDo]

Right now, you're looking at a couple of bucks per month per device on traditional cellular networks for machine to machine interfaces. If you can pay $1K/month and have all of your devices within 30-50 miles reachable, even if its low-speed, that's a big deal.

Re:So, what's the cute trick?

[AmiMoJo]

Companies have been doing this for years so I can tell you exactly how they work. I happen to work on firmware for a product that uses such a network, called HomeRider.

Each device has an 868MHz proprietary radio link to a repeater, which itself has an 868MHz link back to a "concentrator". The concentrator contains a GPRS modem that reports back data in batches periodically. In that way a large number of devices can use a single GPRS connection, keeping costs down.

Devices are mostly things like smart meters or network monitoring. The device I make detects leaks on water pipes, for example.

What these guys seem to be proposing is to put the GPRS modem into each device. We actually do a similar product already, except that it sends SMS text messages because you need less power and can get away with a weaker signal that way. Cost of the data isn't really an issue, which makes me wonder where these guys think the market is. If they are going to go really low speed there will be no advantage of SMS, and if they go higher they won't get the range or keep the cost down.

This is what T-Mobile should do: embedded network.

[mveloso]

If you look at T-Mobile's financials, they're doing horribly with consumers. On the embedded side they're growing like crazy.

Embedded is perfect for 2G/EDGE: low data usage, occasional connections, reliability. T-Mo could become -the- provider for embedded monitoring and make a fortune.

It's not sexy, but it's profitable. The should buy Orbcomm and go end-to-end.

Where the data gonna end up?

[Taco Cowboy]

So you hook up your "things" to this network and they start sharing data, like time you turn off your home heater.

If that kind of data falls into the wrong hand, others will know what time you go out of your house every day and when you come back home.

Data like that might be very valuable to TPTB and also to people with not-so-nice intentions.

A Dream of the 70s

[ALeader71]

So if I move to France I can FINALLY control my coffee maker and blender from my computer? The boyhood dream born out of a 1977 Radio Shack catalog and the groundbreaking X10 technology to control thngs that don't actually need controlling is made possible by Europen beaurocratic perfection. No wonder so many people suddenly want to move abroad.

So much for the "it's Obama's fault" theories. LOL

Security problems

[fph il quozientatore]

Must be great for finding exploitable home appliances. When is the last time you updated the firmware on your TV or your fridge? Wouldn't it be great if it were on an open network?

Re:Security problems

[psergiu]

Ah, but a firmware update is very easy to install. Just power-cycle or reset the device and push a firmware update OVER-THE-AIR. What could possibly go wrong ? [trollface.jpg]

Quot from the PDF on their site (emphasys mine):
-----
4 Bootloader

The TD1202 module contains an integrated bootloader which allows reflashing the module firmware either over the RX/TX UART connection, or over the air using the built-in RF transceiver.

The bootloader is automatically activated upon module reset. Once activated, the bootloader will monitor the UART/RF activity for a 200 ms period, and detect an incoming update condition.

If the update condition is met, the TD1202 will automatically proceed to flash the new firmware with safe retry mechanisms, or falls back to normal operation.

I can't wait

[SnowHog]

Surely the greatest thing since Minitel. By the way, how is Quaero coming along?