Actility opens IoT Lab in Paris with widespread 3GPP industry partner support

Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, March 1, 2018: Actility, the industry leader in Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networks connectivity, today announces the opening of an IoT Lab in the 9th Arrondissement of Paris, home to technology giants and start-ups. The Lab will enable developers to connect, test and prepare for market their devices and applications using a full range of IoT connectivity including LTE-M, NB-IoT and LoRaWAN powered by Actility’s ThingPark Wireless Platform. The lab has garnered support from a wide range of industry partners offering 3GPP-compatible network elements, modules and sensors. The Paris IoTLab is the first of a number to be opened this year by Actility in partnership with customers around the world.

“Our IoT Lab in Paris will offer local network coverage for testing LTE-M/NB-IoT and LoRaWAN devices,” explains Actility CEO Olivier Hersent. “The lab is open to anyone interested in building applications and use cases or testing their devices/modules and real-world integration with cloud platforms such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and IBM Bluemix. In our quest to make the lab the best environment possible for our visitors, we’re collaborating with a number of class-leading technology partners throughout the IoT value chain. The best technology is critical to enable our visitors to create and test the best solutions.”

The main goal of the IoT Lab is to enable LoRaWAN, LTE-M and NB-IoT device makers to perform functional testing and application developers or end-to-end solution developers to provision IoT devices and route their data to cloud application using Actility’s ThingPark Wireless developer platform. The lab will also be used to showcase applications and use cases leveraging both LoRaWAN and LTE side-by-side in a real deployment within a lab environment. In the lab, Actility will also onboard device manufacturers in the ThingPark Partner program and ThingPark Marketplace, and Click & Go.

“Actility’s IoT Lab is exactly the kind of initiative developers need to help them deliver on the vast potential of low-power wireless access technologies,” said Andy Odgers, Quortus Founder and CEO. “At Quortus, we’re already seeing deployments in use cases such as factory IoT that use 4G LTE in concert with 5G-aligned core technologies like network slicing, to deliver the benefits of LPWA today. The flexibility and scalability offered by current and future network architectures means that innovation is restricted only by the limits of the developer’s imagination. We’re proud to be chosen for this key role in the IoT lab, and look forward to a close and ongoing co-operation with Actility and users of the lab.”

“MultiTech and Actility share a desire to simplify the development, testing and deployment of IoT solutions around the globe,” said Stefan Lindvall, CEO of MultiTech. “We are pleased to support the Actility IoT Lab in Paris and enable the next generation of end-to-end IoT application development with our industry-leading portfolio of licensed and unlicensed LPWA hardware.”

“The IoT marketplace needs LPWAN solutions that leverage hardware-software integration to provide the connectivity and networking for a range of applications. These networks offer answers to the challenges of customer adoption including operating costs, connectivity, breadth of coverage, and power consumption,” said Digi Vice President of Product, Scott Nelson. “Approximating real-world conditions in Actility’s IoT Lab test lab gives us the opportunity to test Digi XBee Cellular LTE modems in a manner similar to the way in which our customers will actually use them. We’re looking forward to participating in the test lab so we can demonstrate through example how Digi XBee Cellular products meet the diverse needs and connectivity challenges customers will face during implementation.”

“Actility’s decision to put CND’s OpenEPC multi-access core network software at the heart of its new IOT Lab will help to accelerate the development of commercial IoT solutions for a broad range of use cases. We’re very excited to be part of this important initiative,” said Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO of Core Network Dynamics.

SODAQ has been in IoT and LPWA since 2013 producing development boards like the SODAQ ONE and ExpLoRer. “People often ask me what LPWA technology is the best” says SODAQ’s CEO Jan Willem Smeenk. “Well, each technology has it’s own advantages and disadvantages and we believe that there is a market for all of them, whether it is LoRa, NB-IoT or LTE-M. It is great that places like the Actility IoT Lab exist, so you can experience this at firsthand and to be able to test and compare. And we are delighted to have our developer boards available in this lab.”

“Actility is definitely the world leader in LPWA technology, being part of their IoT Lab has allowed us to test the latest technology and demo our products to potential customers that would be otherwise impossible to reach. LPWAN is here to stay and will definitely ignite the IoT revolution and thanks to Actility we can to play a leading role in this revolution,” says Gimasi CTO Massimo Santoli.

“The cellular IoT or LPWAN market demands mature communication solutions”, states Lars Melzer, Managing Director of CommSolid. “From the beginning we have focused on extensive verification and pre-certification of our NB-IoT modem solution – internally as well as in cooperation with partners. We are pleased to expand our verification activities to the Actility Lab supporting development and release of IoT optimized products with highest maturity level.”

Other participants in the Actility IoT Lab include Pycom and U-Blox.

Developers interested in visiting the lab can learn more and book a visit on the Actility web site (Community>Thing Park Lab).