Actility
New Generation IoT - M2M Communication Technology

The fast growing industry leader in Internet of Things (IoT) and Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networks, Actility, founded in 2010 in France, has recently secured a $25 million funding round led by Foxconn through Ginko Ventures and major telecom players, allowing the company to improve its market strategy for their ThingPark® solution. The ThingPark Wireless®, ThingPark Cloud® and ThingPark Store® services allow millions of objects to communicate bi-directionally and offer an online market place platform commercializing the IoT business. A look inside the intriguing world of connected objects.

Machine to Machine (M2M) communication is increasingly becoming available for a broader scope of applications and has enabled the development of innovative concepts like Smart Cities and Factories. In a connected world, machines communicate automatically to enhance greater efficiency along with security. However, today’s wireless technologies are not optimized to run on a battery with minimal maintenance. “The main challenge today is the need for connected devices with low energy consumption. With the Internet of Things (IoT) new needs for business and consumer business cases, energetic independency is the key for Smart Objects”, says Olivier Hersent, Founder and CTO, Actility.

Actility leads the new generation standard-based M2M communication through its ThingPark platform and is a provider of network solutions and managed information systems for the Internet of Things (IoT) market. With headquarters in Paris, in the heart of the IoT French Tech, Actility’s ThingPark Wireless network provides long-range coverage for low-power sensors used in SmartCity, SmartBuilding and SmartFactory applications. “Since numerous studies predict that by 2020 there will be 20-50 billion connected objects, there is a need for low-power and low energy consumption devices. These trends trigger the need for LPWA network,” adds Hersent.

Actility’s ThingPark Wireless solution is unique because the radio technology used in this solution covers very long distance with low power and is bi-directional. This means objects can stay connected for months without requiring any battery recharge. The spread spectrum modulation technology with a wider bandwidth in ThingPark helps in covering dense city areas up to the range of 1, 2 to 3, 1 mile and up to 9, 3 miles in the countryside.

In all, the technology allows for millions of objects to be connected and to communicate in any given situation and at any given time, all over the world. “ThingPark provides the technology to connect both long range and low power sensors over unlicensed radio band spectrum, allowing low cost and fast roll-out of IoT networks,” says Hersent.

ThingPark Wireless is a thoroughly integrated platform for IoT and has been therefore designed in such a way that it can be implemented anywhere in the nation to enable and enhance services for any market sector,” adds Hersent. ThingPark Cloud provides Big Data storage for sensor data and exposes sensor function. ThingPark Store introduces the « long tail » App Store business model, developed with success by Apple and Google, on the IoT market. The online Store provides an open garden environment to thousands of potential IoT solution vendors who need to be exposed in a market place and be automatically activated on an order.

Actility uses both public and private networks dedicated to IoT to roll-out its technology. The funding round has opened doors for partnerships with major telecom players such as Swisscom (Switzerland), KPN (Netherlands) and Proximus (Belgium) which will enable major IoT roll-outs in the coming year, covering complete cities and countries.

ThingPark provides the technology to connect long range and low power sensors over unlicensed radio band spectrum

Moreover, many companies across a variety of industries have benefitted from adopting Actility’s ThingPark on their private network. A good example is the project “Habitat Toulouse” which is a social housing management company in France. Habitat Toulouse faced issues when managing renovations with the buildings. The organization had approached Actility seeking for a cost effective building monitoring process and to deploy complex infrastructures. “We proposed our solution, ThingPark, which allowed running the monitoring test in all the buildings. As a result, Habitat Toulouse was able to derive desirable results,” expresses Hersent.