Kerlink IoT Connectivity chosen for LoRaWAN network

Called Finistère Smart Connect, the nearly countywide network will enable smart management and efficient usage of 2,000 buildings, 1,200 parking places, 400,000 gas-and-water meters, 250 meteorological probes to monitor air quality and 72,000 public lights for smart-lighting applications.

Additional public services include smart waste management and water distribution. As with many LoRaWAN deployments around the world, benefits were demonstrated early on, such as a 20% reduction of energy use in some public buildings.

The deployment in the county, or ‘départment’ in France, is the first known use of the LoRaWAN protocol by an energy consortium formed to realise the benefits of the IoT to coordinate and customise vital public services according to needs of users over such a large area.

“While the Internet of Things and smart-city projects are emerging in large metropolitan areas, rural areas and medium-sized towns are still not sufficiently involved in such experiments,” Finistère’s Departmental Union of Energy and Equipment of Finistère (SDEF) has explained on its website. “To address this issue, SDEF and Eiffage Energie Systèmes are going to make a connected territory service available throughout the départment, with the exception of the Brest metropolis.

“This project will provide local authorities in Finistère with tools to control and manage the implementation of their public policies in the areas of energy and financial efficiency applied to public network services, as well as in the area of citizen relations.”

Kerlink delivered 420 Wirnet iBTS Compact LoRaWAN gateways for the project. They are controlled by the company’s Wanesy Management Center, a highly modular and complete solution, including an operating support system, base-station controller, radio network controller, and LoRaWAN Network Server to run, monitor and manage the network.

“The scope of Finistère Smart Connect is unique for its size and its ability to serve many diverse cities and small towns in a single, joint project,” added Stéphane Dejean, Kerlink CMO. “It highlights once again the flexibility for customised designs and deployments, and the long-rage coverage of the LoRaWAN protocol, and for the predictably seamless integration of Kerlink industrial-grade gateways and Wanesy Management Center in Internet of Things networks.”

The Finistère Smart Connect project leaders from the private sector are:

• Eiffage Energie Systèmes, a French group specialising in public works,
• Qwant, a French search engine focused on privacy and security for users,
• Sensing Vision, a start-up specialised in IoT & network supervision, with Kerlink as subcontractor, and
• Dolmen, a local customer marketing platform.