In the News

From a sustainability perspective, the overall impact of the telecommunications industry is strongly positive. The GSM Association together with the Carbon Trust have estimated that in 2018 the total carbon-equivalent (CO2e) emissions of the mobile sector are around 0.4% of total global emissions, while savings achieved through ‘Smart Living and Working’, including a range of virtualised services supported by cellular connectivity (but not including IoT solutions), amounted to nearly 4x this amount.

When combined with Internet of Things connectivity and data analytics, smart metering can help utilities improve the delivery of services.

With the growth of the new spectrum and increasing popularity of mobile private networks (MPNs), specific enterprises are taking a closer look at dedicated mobile networks. Matt Hatton, the founding partner of Transforma Insights, delves deep into the fast-evolving world of mobile private networks and private wireless.

Ahead of Total Telecom Congress 2022, we spoke to Matt Hatton – Founding Partner at Transforma Insights to hear his take on the changing enterprise connectivity market.

Belgian telco BICS and French engineering giant Thales are working together to smooth out some of the pain points associated with eSIM technology in IoT devices. To cut to the chase, the level of integration required with mobile network operators is proving a barrier to entry for enterprise IoT, according to BICS and Thales. So they are coming together to tackle this, hoping to be able to increase eSIM adoption and in turn give the enterprise IoT space a boost.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk and T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert announced a joint plan — Coverage Above and Beyond — to eliminate mobile dead zones, by leveraging SpaceX’s Starlink constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit and T-Mobile’s wireless network.

Water is probably the most important and overly used global natural resource. According to a report from the World Resource Institute, about one-quarter of the world’s population, spread across 17 countries, faces extremely high level of water stress and by 2040, it is most likely that 1 in 4 children will be living in areas of extremely high water stress. Water conservation has become one of the direst needs today and the biggest challenge for utilities in the water sector.

The IoT hardware market has, suddenly, shrunk – in order to expand, and to rebalance the western power-play. So say market watchers, reacting to the twin acquisitions this week by US-based chipmaker and Semtech, which has confirmed a deal to splurge $1.2 billion on Canadian outfit Sierra Wireless, and Italian-American IoT module maker Telit, which has agreed a share-exchange for the IoT assets of French industrial firm Thales.

The latest iteration of the 3GPP standards for mobile communications, Release 17, includes a new variant of 5G aimed specifically at IoT.

There were two high profile pieces of M&A news in the IoT hardware space in the last week. First up, on Friday 29th July, Telit and Thales announced that they were combining the assets of Telit with those of Thales’ IoT hardware business into Telit Cinterion. That was followed on 2nd August by the news that Semtech Corporation would acquire Sierra Wireless.