Proximus and Flemish digital research centre iMinds are collaborating on standardising and developing LoRa technology.
Proximus has been one of the drivers of LoRa technology and co-founded an alliance determined to foster the adoption of the technology. It launched its LoRa network last year.
The technology has been seen as means of allowing operators to roll out LPWAN while cellular IoT technology, NB-IoT, is being standardised.
However, the Belgian operator said LoRa also needs to be standardised, in order to make the technology more robust and mature. The two organisations will also work on smart city applications.
Dominique Leroy, CEO of Proximus, said: “Right from the beginning, Proximus has been an active member of the international LoRa alliance, which is dedicated to the standardization of the LoRaWAN technology. iMinds is now also joining this alliance to introduce and implement the new LoRa solutions together with us. Thanks to the cooperation with iMinds researchers, we can now play an even more decisive role in the roll-out of smart cities, smart homes, smart logistics and smart industries.”
Danny Goderis, CEO of iMinds, added: “But ultimately, we want to extend the strategic cooperation between iMinds and Proximus to other fields in the coming years. The expertise of our researchers in fields such as cloud computing, big data, digital TV, etc. is a perfect match for the core activities of Proximus.”
The two companies have previously worked on researching new technologies for mobile video, sending data across transport networks and how to manage capacity during peak network times.