Thing users: you need national narrowband

A couple of Australian telco industry veterans reckon the Internet of Things needs an access network of its own, to meet the requirements of cheap, low-volume traffic.

Industry newsletter Communications Day reports today that founder Rob Zagarella told a Communications Alliance workshop that the outfit wants to create an open access network, possibly using the national broadband network (NBN) for backhaul.

Hence the launch, with industry veteran David Spence, of National Narrowband Network Communications, which the pair envisage as deploying base stations for IoT applications and providing the backhaul to the thing-user's servers.

Zagarella hopes that the network would let customers use cheap comms chips – in the range of AU$1-$2 per device – and because it's an open access network, it would make IoT applications more accessible to sectors like agriculture.

Communications Day quotes him as saying that “being something that’s open and interoperable means that a farmer in a remote community could collectively, through a group, deploy a couple of standards-based infrastructure basestations on assets that they have, and have that interoperate through a national program with data that can be accessible to various parts of industry”.

The company intends to use ISM frequencies, and is in discussion with the federal government and the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to identify bands in Australia that are harmonised with international spectrum allocations. ®