Home
 » ISP News » 
Sponsored Links

Connexin Calls on UK Gov to Recognise LPWAN as Critical Infrastructure

Monday, Nov 11th, 2024 (3:34 pm) - Score 1,360
Wireless-radio-spectrum-UK-mast-tower-123RF-ID-13477202

Fixed wireless operator and broadband ISP Connexin has today called on the UK government to expand its focus beyond full fibre and 5G mobile by recognising Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN / LoRaWAN), which are often used to help connect small IoT style sensors and meters, as “critical infrastructure“.

Connexin, which is also involved in its own roll-out FTTP broadband technologies, is separately a member of the LoRa Alliance (LoRo = Long Range), a membership organisation where industry experts collaborate and share experiences to promote and drive the success of LoRaWAN wireless networks. As part of that they recently launched the “Liberté, Egalité, Connectivity: LPWAN for All” movement to help encourage the UK gov to recognise LPWAN as critical infrastructure.

NOTE: The operator is backed by an investment of £80m from PATRIZIA.

Sites or networks designated as Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) are those facilities, systems, sites, information, people, networks and processes, necessary for a country to function and upon which daily life depends. It also includes some functions, sites and organisations which are not critical to the maintenance of essential services, but which need protection due to the potential danger to the public (e.g. civil nuclear and chemical sites).

Advertisement

In short, being part of CNI would afford such networks greater protection, much like the energy supply, water supply, transportation, health and other telecoms networks.

Jason Legget, Lead for Connexin’s Public Sector & Enterprise IoT Solutions, said:

“We’re looking to work with UK partners and businesses who see LPWAN as a vital part of their operations. We want to create solutions for customers that build evidence of LPWAN’s benefits and drive confidence in it as a solution. We also want to bring together consortiums by working together with the LoRa Alliance to agree on the right policy message to deliver to our new Government.”

Connexin’s viewpoint here is that if governments continue to only talk about 5G and FTTP as the answer for all our connectivity needs, then “deployment and adoption of IoT solutions will continue to be frustrated” (i.e. commercial investment will slow and the benefits such as innovative new service models and important operational efficiencies will not be realised at a pace that is needed). It perhaps doesn’t help that wireless LPWAN networks have always been more in the background and don’t grab the same sort of headlines, despite having plenty of uses and growing in popularity for IoT connectivity.

Share with Twitter
Share with Linkedin
Share with Facebook
Share with Reddit
Share with Pinterest
Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and .
Search ISP News
Search ISP Listings
Search ISP Reviews
Comments
5 Responses

Advertisement

  1. Avatar photo Name says:

    Is anyone using their LoRa network for anything crucial, that can’t fallback to anything else to recognise it as critical?

    1. Avatar photo Chap says:

      I understand that electricity meters in Scotland and the north of England use LoRaWAN for connectivity as opposed to 2G in the south.

      Coincidentally timed article on BBC News today. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq52382zd1no

      Got a junk mail in the post a couple of months ago asking if [company] could rent space on our roof to install a LoRaWAN gateway. My understanding is that the forthcoming smart water meters use it too.

    2. Avatar photo Mark Smith says:

      Connexin have been quire successful with LoRaWAN and large scale water meter rollouts with utility companies.
      Connecting water meters isn’t just about efficient meter reading. It allows water companies to really understand how water is being used in near real time which helps them manage the water. It helps them identify where leaks are at a very granular level.
      Connected Water meters need to have a very long battery life (for obvious reasons), and nothing beats LoRaWAN in this regard.
      The reason they want to get it ‘classified’ as critical infrastructure is so they can use code powers to deploy poles to install their gateways on.

    3. Avatar photo Name says:

      I am guessing Anglian Water is not the one they supply because I very often see AW guys uncovering manhole in front of my home to scan the value.

  2. Avatar photo Julie Dervey says:

    There’ll be poles for broadband, poles for mobile, poles for electric meter reading, gas, water, traffic monitoring…
    The list is endless and the number of multiple companies doing this will be endless

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

NOTE: Your comment may not appear instantly (it may take several hours) due to static caching or random moderation checks by the anti-spam system.
Javascript must be enabled to post (most browsers do this automatically)

Privacy Notice: Please note that news comments are anonymous, which means that we do NOT require you to enter any real personal details to post a message. By clicking to submit a post you agree to storing your comment content, display name, IP, email and / or website details in our database, for as long as the post remains live.

Only the submitted name and comment will be displayed in public, while the rest will be kept private (we will never share this outside of ISPreview, regardless of whether the data is real or fake). This comment system uses submitted IP, email and website address data to spot abuse and spammers. All data is transferred via an encrypted (https secure) session.

NOTE 1: Sometimes your comment might not appear immediately due to site cache (this is cleared every few hours) or it may be caught by automated moderation / anti-spam.

NOTE 2: Comments that break our rules, spam, troll or post via known fake IP/proxy servers may be blocked or removed.
Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £24.00 - 26.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
NOW UK ISP Logo
NOW £24.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £25.99
145Mbps
Gift: £50 Reward Card
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £17.00
200Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Youfibre UK ISP Logo
Youfibre £23.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (6024)
  2. BT (3638)
  3. Politics (2720)
  4. Business (2439)
  5. Openreach (2405)
  6. Building Digital UK (2330)
  7. Mobile Broadband (2143)
  8. FTTC (2083)
  9. Statistics (1899)
  10. 4G (1813)
  11. Virgin Media (1762)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1582)
  13. Fibre Optic (1467)
  14. Wireless Internet (1462)
  15. 5G (1404)
Promotion
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms , Privacy and Cookie Policy , Links , Website Rules , Contact
Mastodon