SigFox? Slow Telecom to Speed Up IoT

What if the smartest thing to do was to play dumb? And when everybody's racing for the best performances, to deliberately aim at the most limited service? SixFox is not exactly 5G on steroids, but rather TETRA on Valium (for those of you who remember Dolphin Telecom). 

SigFox focuses on M2M applications, you know, that formerly un-sexy business that become hot overnight when some marketing genius rebranded it "Internet of Things". Well at SigFox, they don't hesitate to use the old 'machine-to-machine' jargon. We're talking about French entrepreneurs (Christophe Fourtet and Ludovic Le Moan) headquartered in a town of 4,000 souls near Toulouse (Labege), but Labege is an innovation cluster, and Le Moan someone who's already made it before (Scoop.it). Furthermore, SigFox rolled up its first network in San Francisco area, a neighborhood more associated with start-ups and IoT, not to mention players like Cisco. Now it's also attacking the UK with Arqiva.

What do these guys do? Provide connectivity solutions for M2M-IoT applications that DO NOT require more than:
• 140 messages per object per day
• 12 bytes for each message
• 100 bits per second

So don't expect video chats between your toaster and your Ski-Doo. With such constraints, you still can cover a wide array of basic information systems, typically two-way communications with meters or sensors, device location, alerts... Ever the early adopter, Clear Channel was among their first consumers. 

That's long distance wireless (WAN), and any cellco can provide this kind of service, and some m-VNOs have already specialized in M2M, so what's the deal?

SixFox uses Ultra Narrow Band (UNB), and unlicensed spectrum - ISM. In Frisco, that's on 915 MHz (902 usually available in the US), and in Europe on 868 MHz. So the so-called SNOs (SigFox Network Operators) can operate without a license. 

Furthermore, energy costs are really low. According to SixFox's white paper, communicating from an energy meter consumes only 50 microwatts compared to 5,000 over cellular technology, which means that a 2.5 Ah battery shall last 20 years instead of a couple of months.

You won't find much about the cloud costs, or the hardware at the device of the infra levels, but a BS is said to cover a 3-to-10 km radius in urban areas and 30-to-50 km in rural areas. Here too, because there's much less waste at many levels (e.g. protocol data), the network is supposed to consume 200 to 600 less energy than a classic cellular network.

Can this 'slow telecom' approach speed up IoT? Certainly if some guys take this ungratifying part of the job seriously. This is all about minor operations with very low margins, and you want to be among the first ones to reach big volumes. The big players have yet to join the party, and some of them could be tempted to pull out their own broadband UNB gun, or the checkbook (sending SigFox one simple message, under 12 bytes, but preferably for Le Moan and Fourtet, with a lot of 0s).

As of today, on its own counters (on sigfox.com), SigFox claims 157,499,000 messages sent and 3,935 kw saved compared to GSM. I'd like to check these numbers one year from now.

mot-bile 2014

Over the air

Easy does it again : a few weeks after the UK and T-Mobile (where they expect between 250 and 500,000 subs end of year 1, reaching the 1M mark within 2-3 years), easyMobile will land on Telfort's network in the Netherlands thanks to Stelios' Danish partner TDC. Opening new routes gets simpler by the day for M-VNO airlines. When will the big companies go for their own discount carriers ? Austria's One just said YESSS! : an orgasmic brand for a rather non sexy service which could crash the same way as KLM's buzz. The sky isn't fully crowded yet but CWH's new M-VNO (SIM-Only) starts cleaning it with very aggressive international rates (Mobile World cards charge 7p per minute for Europe, 5p for the US, even if the national rates remain as Fresh as 15p).
The war is on and many will fall but one player just found the perfect niche : 100,000 loyal subs and a lovely £2.9bn contract with the Home Office... TETRA is eventually making it in the UK. O2's Airwave O2 service will protect and serve The Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO) and thus the policemen and women of the whole United Kingdom.
And while O2 expose their bobbies, Tele2's Tango expose boobies over the air in Luxemburg : they've been broadcasting free TV over 3G for almost a month now, following the launch of radio over 3G (Sunshine Radio Luxembourg). Tango TV (TTV) is available through the T.TVMobile wap portal (wap.ttv.lu) and of course hosts an erotic channel.
Over the air again, different vibes, different game : the same day Samsung Electronics introduced their 3D game phones with vibration capability (SPH-G1000 & SCH-G100), 3 UK launched over the air real-time multiplayer gaming services. The games are sold between £3 and 7.50 but can also be rent 25p per day or 50p for up to 3 days. Three hope it will be as successful as their football services. This could actually become Chelski and Hutch's year : Hutchison's 3G squad (3 + HTIL) reached 8M subs end of T1, adding 1.7M within the last 3 months.

2005 : how about Europe ?

So 2004 is over, with WCDMA reaching the 16M user mark globally (up 60% since end of Q3), essentially thanks to three players : DoCoMo (migration speeding up in Japan), 3 (cheap voice sells and there's no better way of attracting stupid European men than displaying some soccer action) and Vodafone (at last at ease with marketing). As expected, the technology is starting to catch up with CDMA2000 (145M users end 2004, up from 100M in july, thanks to 107 operators covering 53 countries) : WCDMA just represents 10% of the total 3G customer base, but already 32% of Qualcomm's Q4 royalties (up from 12% one year earlier). And doc Jacobs is speeding up on HSDPA.
But Qualcomm are also investing in Europe, and a much clever way than they did with Dolphin (a genuine TETRAgedy). The cdma family is saved, Brew enjoys its own market like any Microsoft me-too product, and the battle may well move closer to the enduser. Look how Mr Q purchased Europe's Trigenix, a specialist in user interface. Look how they sell their mobile broadcasting MediaFLO techno in the US : it's all about user experience (no progress bar, less consumption, easy shuffle...), at a time when Orange marvel at the daily 25 mn their Orange Intense early adopters spend on live TV in France... but don't realise yet this may not be the best technology to perform this basic task.
Another interesting move, from Asia to America this time : the SK-Earthlink JV, a MVNO projecting 3M subs and a $2bn turnover by the end of 2009. Smart move from both players - a perfect match in a coopetitive world. The days of the merger with Mindspring long gone, Earthlink claims about 5M subs and its wireless MVNO experience shows a strong focus on business and data services. SKT has it all, plus the wireless expertise, the consumer focus and the entertainment touch. Wireless internet services represented 20% of their 2004 ARPU, almost 24% during Q4 (24%, that's about the percentage of the mobile users who had some mobile multimedia experience beyond sms in France !). Yet if they want to implement all their success stories in the US, SKT should expect some resistance from powerful lobbies (ie banks vs Moneta, music majors vs MelOn...). But they survived portability and managed to gain more than 400K customers last year. And succeeding in the US is a strong commitment.
How about Europe ? There was a time when its players ruled 2G. Before the 3G licensing madness, a few did have some vision but much too early and with the wrong priorities (remember Telefonica ?). So forget about an aggressive agenda in Asia or in the Americas. But who knows ? Sometimes it pays not to be the first to blow a bubble.