“Great to see another IoT network launch. Capacity is building, bring on the demand!”
Source: Thinxtra
Thinxtra’s New Zealand network is now complete with 94% of the population within coverage, including all major cities and regional cities, and as far as Hawera and Invercargill. Every population centre throughout New Zealand now has comprehensive redundant Sigfox coverage, Thinxtra is currently focusing on expanding out the Sigfox network in rural and remote areas by the end of the year, to support NZ agriculture exporting to Australia and worldwide.
Sigfox is winning the global race of the LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) market to connect the un-connected, the Internet of Simple Things, with 47 countries now being deployed on a national scale, and 2.5 million ‘live’ connections.
The Sigfox network was built by IoT rollout experts, Kordia – Thinxtra’s preferred network partner in New Zealand. It is however monitored by Thinxtra’s Network Operation Centre to provide 99% SLA (Service Level Agreement) to our customers and partners.
Thinxtra is fully operational to support local projects anywhere in New Zealand with our 275 partners and solutions makers in Australia and New Zealand, including Kordia and Datacom as major local partners. The Sigfox network is already enabling commercially deployed smart city and agriculture projects, including, monitoring waste bins in Christchurch, monitoring speed & school signs in North Island, water tank level monitoring in farms in Waikato, monitoring temperature of Paua tanks,… with many more industrial and smart city projects in progress to be announced soon.
Aaron Olphert, Chief Digital Officer at Kordia, has been involved in the rollout of Sigfox’s low-power network from the very beginning and believes it will fast track the adoption of IoT solutions over the coming year. “With previous barriers to adoption – namely cost and power consumption – now removed, our customers are starting to get more and more excited about what IoT can do for them. The conversations our team has been having in the past few months alone have been incredibly positive and there’s certain sectors, particularly agriculture, local government and logistics, where we’re seeing a real step-change in attitude towards IoT solutions as a business enabler. Kordia is proud to be involved and we look forward to bringing Sigfox solutions to the market; and helping local businesses make the most of this incredible technology.”
One smaller company, undergoing a significant growth creating innovative IoT solutions in the Agriculture sector throughout New Zealand is Knode. As Managing Director, Richard Wildman explains “The Sigfox network in New Zealand has enabled us to offer smart, cost-effective solutions to Kiwi farmers and other New Zealand businesses. Prior to Sigfox, the devices on offer were quite expensive with a limited battery life and the farming community faced challenges of little to no cell coverage. For example, with the Sigfox NZ network, Knode is able to provide full end to end solutions for monitoring farm assets – this includes monitoring water flow, checking for leaks, measuring tank levels and an increasing host of other data points on farm, including soil moisture and weather data”. With numerous requests to provide cost effective reliable smart IoT solutions to farmers and businesses throughout the country, Richard is happy to satisfy the growing demand, coinciding with Thinxtra plans to massively expand coverage of the rural sector up and down the country.
Thinxtra NZ has its main office in Auckland but is also expanding its presence to Christchurch, recognising the strong activities coming out of South Island by our ecosystem and rapidly expanding customer base.
Thinxtra is also working closely with many overseas partners and solution makers from Europe, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and US to launch their Sigfox-ready solutions on a full-scale network with early adopters in New Zealand ahead of introducing those solutions to the rest of Asia-Pacific.
