This Startup Is Building A Cellular Network For Your Lightbulb And Toaster

On a drizzly San Francisco afternoon in March, Ludovic Le Moan, 52, climbs to the roof of San Francisco’s stately public library. He’s there to check on a 5-foot pole equipped with a small antenna and a briefcase-size box. It’s one of 22 “base stations” his French startup, Sigfox, has placed throughout the city and one of 6,000 it operates across 18 countries as part of its improbable quest: building a wireless network that will cover at least 100 U.S. cities by year’s end and eventually span much of the planet.

Global wireless networks are the stuff of Big Infrastructure–multiyear, multibillion-dollar projects that can be undertaken only by deep-pocketed corporate behemoths like telecoms. Le Moan’s startup, which has raised $150 million from investors, is aiming for something different. If the wireless networks of AT&T or Verizon are like massive water projects of canals and municipal pipes, Sigfox’s is the equivalent of a drip irrigation system. It transmits data in tiny, 12-byte packets at a time. That’s not enough to download even a lightweight app onto a cellphone, but it’s sufficient to beam a gadget’s location or a reading from a sensor or to sound an alarm. It’s aimed not at smartphones but at the long-promised next wave of Internet-connected devices known as the Internet of Things, or IoT. It could be the key to finally unlocking the tantalizing but still elusive future in which billions upon billions of gadgets–smart lightbulbs, connected thermostats, industrial sensors, biosensors, weather instruments and countless other devices–will be woven together to enhance efficiency in factories, speed up supply chains, revolutionize transportation, improve personal and public health, advance environmental protection and, yes, automate your home.

“The Internet of Things isn’t the traditional cellular business,” Le Moan says in his thick French accent. “The wireless industry’s thinking is that this market naturally follows their existing business … but the Internet of Things requires something new.”

Link to article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2016/06/01/sigfox-cellular-network/#5443ff3976a2