Actility partners with network operators worldwide to launch ThingPark Exchange, the first LoRaWAN international roaming hub

Actility, the industry leader in Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) network connectivity, today announces ThingPark Exchange, the first hub for international IoT roaming, and the agreement of a number of public LoRaWAN operators around the world to sign up to the service. LoRa Alliance members including Australian operator NNNCo and Finland’s Digita, will connect their LoRaWAN network servers to the Actility ThingPark Exchange platform to enable instant packet roaming between their networks.

“Global roaming between different networks will enable new multi-country use cases and new business models with simpler deployment models,” explains Actility CEO Olivier Hersent. “Although roaming between different LoRaWAN operators has been standardized, it still requires operators to establish individual connections between many public or enterprise operators, making the process long, expensive and inefficient. ThingPark Exchange is the first roaming enablement platform to be fully compliant with the new LoRa Alliance roaming specifications. Now, once set up on the platform, any operator has an instant connection to all the other partner operators.”

The Exchange hub enables LoRaWAN service providers to consistently execute and control their roaming agreements. If necessary, traffic policy and Service Level Agreements (SLA) can be customised through individual commercial agreements.

By joining ThingPark Exchange, service providers will be able to more easily meet their customers’ requirements for global roll-outs. For example, companies active in a several countries or globally will be able to contract with only one operator for their IoT connectivity, instead of a different operator in every country. The chosen single operator, connected to ThingPark Exchange, will be able to make use of other Exchange-connected roaming partners to supply a multi-country connectivity solution for its customer.

“ThingPark Exchange will allow Digita to provide high-quality LoRaWAN services for our customers wherever they are needed globally, whilst simplifying the process of setting up worldwide connectivity arrangements dramatically,” says Digita’s IoT Services Director Ari Kuukka.

“We’re excited by the possibilities ThingPark Exchange opens up,” says NNNCo CEO Rob Zagarella. “Not only international use cases, but also the ability for our customers with regional enterprise or city networks to use roaming between networks to extend coverage for certain use cases throughout Australia.

ThingPark Exchange is a component of Actility’s ThingPark Services Center, which offers a range of services to enrich and augment the capabilities of deployed networks. It includes ThingPark Activation for large-scale device activation; TP Location for one-stop location determination and exposure using a mix of several location technologies; and TP FOTA Server which enables firmware-over-the-air update of devices in the field, increasing their lifetime & enhancing security.