Sigfox

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SIGFOX
Native name
 SIGFOX
Société Anonyme
Industry Wireless services
Founded 2009
Founders Ludovic Le Moan and Christophe Fourtet
Headquarters Labège, near Toulouse, France
Area served
 Global
Key people
 Ludovic le Moan, CEO; Anne Lauvergeon, Chairman; Christophe Fourtet, Scientific Director
Services IoT
Revenue €5 million[1] (2015)
Number of employees
 190[2]
Website Official website

Sigfox (styled SIGFOX) is a French company that builds wireless networks to connect low-energy objects such as electricity meters, smartwatches, and washing machines, which need to be continuously on and emitting small amounts of data. Its technology is aimed at the Internet of Things (IoT).[3][4][5]

SIGFOX was founded in 2009 by Ludovic Le Moan and Christophe Fourtet and raised $30 million during its first two rounds of funding.[6][3]

SIGFOX provides cellular connectivity for the Internet of Things in countries such as France, Spain, Luxembourg, Denmark, United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Italy, Poland, Ireland, Chile, Russia, Taiwan, Singapore, and Colombia.[7][8] As of 2016, Sigfox had 7 million registered connected devices in 24 countries and plans to expand its network in 60 countries by 2020.

Location[edit]

SIGFOX is based in Labège, France, at the so-called IoT Valley.[9][10] SIGFOX has over 80 employees.[3][11][12] The firm also has offices in Madrid, San Francisco, and at the Partech Shaker.[13][14][15] In 2015, after partnering with Samsung, the company announced it would open an R&D centre in Paris.[16]

Funding[edit]

During two rounds of funding, SIGFOX raised $30 million from Idinvest Partners, FSN PME, Ambition Numérique, Intel Capital, Elaia Partners, Partech, and Ixo Private Equity.[3][17][18]

It was reported in February 2015 that SIGFOX, in a third round of funding, raised $115 million from seven investors "to help it build new networks globally".[19][20][21][22] The investors were Spain's Telefónica, France's Engie, NTT DoCoMo Ventures (Docomo Capital), SK Telecom, Air Liquide, and Elliott Management. In June 2015, it was announced Samsung and another "major player like Samsung" invested an undisclosed amount towards the $115 million fundraising round according to TechCrunch.[23] Reuters noted that the firm planned "to roll out its network in 60 countries" by 2020, which include: the U.S., Japan, South Korea, and several Latin American nations.[24][25][26] Bloomberg reported U.S. energy, retail, and food companies including McDonald's Corp, AT&T, and Sprint were interested in the company's technology, which totaled €3 million in sales in 2013.[19] In November 2016, Sigfox closed a Series E funding round of €150 million ($160 million) from investors including Total, Salesforce Ventures and Henri Seydoux, among others.[27]

The company is considering an initial public offering in 2016, or by mid-2017, Ludovic Le Moan stated to Bloomberg.[21]

Officers[edit]

Ludovic Le Moan, an engineer with a degree from ENSIMAG, is co-founder of the firm and serves as its CEO and Director.[24] He previously managed the COFRAMI Group, created Anyware Technologies, and founded GOOJET, now Scoop.it.[28]

Anne Lauvergeon is SIGFOX's chairman, a position formerly held by Ludovic Le Moan. She joined SIGFOX as a member of the board in 2014.[10][23] In 2009, she was ranked 4th in Fortune's ten most powerful international female leaders list.[29][30]

Christophe Fourtet, an engineer, is scientific director of SIGFOX. He graduated from INSA (Lyon) in Electrical and Telecommunications Sciences, and holds a postdoctoral degree in Electromagnetism. He has previously worked for DGA, SAGEM, Motorola, and Freescale Semiconductor. He took part in the group that created the Motorola cell phone.[31]

Technology[edit]

SIGFOX employs a cellular system "that enables remote devices to connect using ultra-narrow band (UNB) technology", the same used for submarine communications during World War I.[19] As one expert explains, "M2M and IoT will give rise to billions of nodes that require connecting. Most of these will require only low bandwidth to transfer small amounts of data. Some will also require this to be connected over distances greater than those achievable simply by a transmitter on its own. For many of these applications, the traditional cellular phone systems are too complex to allow for very low power operation, and too costly to be feasible for many small low cost nodes...The SIGFOX network and technology is aimed at the low cost machine to machine application areas where wide area coverage is required".[32][33][34][35][36]

Sigfox's network requires little energy, being termed "Low-power Wide-area network (LPWAN)". It utilizes a wide-reaching signal that passes freely through solid objects, called "ultra narrowband", which consists of free sections of the radio spectrum, particularly the ISM band.[37] Sigfox posits that their messages can travel up to 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) and each base station can handle up to a million objects, consuming 1/1000 the energy as a standard cellular system.[38]

Sigfox devices cannot carry heavy amounts of data. Networks are only able to handle approximately 12 bytes per message, and at the same time no more than 140 messages per device per day.[29] With 12 bytes, one can represent any number between 1 and 79 octillion, which translates as a myriad control codes, used for applications such as geolocation and tracking; monitoring a public defibrillator station to know when someone uses it; or parking space monitoring and billing. Sigfox devices can work up to 20 years off two AA batteries, because it only turns on when it sends a message and then goes back to sleep, according to Thomas Nicholls, Executive Vice President of communications at the company.[37][39]

According to Machina Research, an M2M advisory group, the year 2024 will see a total of 27 billion M2M connections or 80 billion connected objects, 14% of which will represent LPWA connections like those offered by Sigfox and its competitors, such as LoRa and Neul (Huawei).[40][41][42][43][41][44]

Coverage[edit]

As of early 2015, SIGFOX's network covered France (1200 base station towers), Spain (1300 base station towers), the Netherlands, and ten British cities (in conjunction with Arqiva) including London, Manchester and Edinburgh.[39][45][46] Its coverage extended to several million objects. In Spain, for example, in collaboration with Securitas Direct and Telefónica, it has provided block-proof IoT transmission technology towards a "quintuple play" service, including security, broadband, telephone, mobile and TV.[47][24][48][49] Sigfox is collaborating with Fastprk in Moscow, having deployed 11 thousand devices that collect real-time information about parking spots.[50]

In 2014, Sigfox began building an ultra-narrowband wireless data network in the San Francisco Bay Area, the first to achieve such a deployment in the U.S., using the 900MHz band.[51][52][19] As of May 2015, it counts with 15 base stations in San Francisco.[53][54]

Sigfox announced in June 2015 its arrival in Denmark. Copenhagen-based company IoT Denmark will provide partial support towards the Sigfox network. Denmark would thus join the list of countries counting with Sigfox IoT coverage, including the UK, US, Germany, Italy, Poland, Ireland, Chile and Colombia.[5] Similarly, Engie, via Engie M2M, announced its intentions to deploy Sigfox's network in Belgium by 2017, which would include B2C integration with one of Engie's subsidiaries, Electrabel.[55][56]

In August 2015, Luxembourg became the eighth country to deploy nationwide IoT coverage, extending coverage that was already in place in the cities of Ettelbruck and Luxembourg. The deployment would take place in conjunction with POST Telecom.[57][58]

As of January 2016, Sigfox had coverage for 92% of France's population, 94% of Spain's, and “similar numbers” for the Netherlands.[2][2] That same month, Sigfox announced its partnership with OVH, wherein Sigfox-compatible devices would use the company's PaaS TimeSeries IoT object database, which “collects, treats and monitors” IoT data from devices. Specifically, Sigfox seeks to add more than 7000 temperature sensors to the OVH network for more accurate use.[59]

In August 2016, Sigfox announced a partnership with Taiwanese manufacturer Advantech. The deal will launch Sigfox’s IoT network in Taiwan, wherein Advantech will build its base stations. This came one month after Sigfox's announcement to move into Singapore. Advantech will build a reported 450 base stations for the network.[60] In conjunction with the full Taiwanese rollout by 2018, Sigfox also announced the creation of an IoT testbed in that country, in partnership with Engie and UnaBiz, to provide IoT connectivity to the country's electronics manufacturing industry.[61][62][63]

As of 2016, Sigfox counted with 7 million registered connected devices in 24 countries,[64] with 6000 base stations across 18 countries.[65]

Associations[edit]

It was reported in May 2014 that the WhistleGPS canine tracking collar would use SIGFOX's wireless system for low-power monitoring in the San Francisco Bay Area and parts of San Jose.[52][66][67]

OCEASOFT, a provider of sensor-based environmental monitors, announced in 2014 a partnership with SIGFOX that would use SIGFOX's global network to transmit data from OCEASOFT's cobalt sensors to cloud storage.[68][69][70]

SIGFOX announced in February 2015 that it was joining the Airbus MUSTANG Project to provide machine-to-machine communication on a global scale using low-cost messages. The project is supported by the French Government's Directorate General for Enterprise.[71][72][73]

TALIS, a supplier of water-flow equipment, announced in April 2015 that it would be using SIGFOX’s IoT network to bring its fire hydrant-monitoring technology, COPERNIC, to connected cities. This would make it possible to track and analyze the status of "smart" fire hydrants to ensure functionality.[74][75]

In June 2016, Samsung disclosed its partnership with Sigfox, according to president Young Sohn, while stating its funding round involvement and explaining its forthcoming ARTIK developer kits would come with Sigfox-compatible hardware chips to work on Sigfox's IoT network "out of the box".[23][51][76]

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External links[edit]

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