Cellnex have announced their partnership with IoT specialist Everynet to deploy LoRaWAN technology across their infrastructure network in Italy, the UK and Ireland.
It goes without saying that the IoT is a rapidly growing area of technology with huge economic potential; estimates suggest that the global IoT market is currently valued at around $248 billion, with a forecast to increase to $1,567 billion by 2025. From unlocking smart cities to revolutionising industry, IoT is going to be at the heart of many of the next decades most exciting connectivity projects.
Cellnex says that their IoT tech deployment will explore numerous solutions using the new technology, including Industry 4.0-related solutions, smart cities, smart parking, smart utilities, and facility and environmental management. “This will involve installing sensors and monitoring comfort levels and consumption across multiple environments, indoor and outdoor, in various types of building, and transmitting service and gathering data across wider territory networks,” read their announcement.
“This is an important step forward to embrace the very rapid deployment that new technologies are experiencing in response to the unprecedented changes that society and global economies are facing. A first class connectivity infrastructure at the service of new communication ecosystems that we strongly believe will enable renewed business models,” explained Cellnex global commercial director Oscar Pallarols.
This year has seen Cellnex swell with numerous acquisitions across Europe, with its total portfolio now spanning 61,000 sites in Spain, Italy, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Portugal. Leveraging their infrastructure empire to provide IoT services could certainly prove very lucrative, presenting opportunities to work directly with integrators, developers, and telecommunications companies themselves.
However, this move could in fact be a little disconcerting for the operators themselves, since they would much rather have direct control of the burgeoning IoT market themselves, without seeing it leveraged by infrastructure providers like Cellnex. As the technology continues to mature, it seems that telcos could have a fight on their hands.