Sigfox makes US move

French IoT wireless tech provider Sigfox has announced it will expanding its US network to cover 100 cities by the end of this year.

Sigfox is claiming this is in strong demand for its low-power network in the US and it will be partnering with a number of existing site owners including tower, rooftop and billboard sites, to enable this ambitious roll-out.

“The U.S. is a huge growth market for Internet of Things connectivity, especially in smart cities, utilities, shipping and agriculture sectors that require large-scale and cost-effective communication,” said Allen Proithis, president of Sigfox North America.

“Our partnerships with these site owners enables Sigfox to leverage existing sites to rapidly deploy our out-of-the-box connectivity solution in the U.S. market. Sigfox’s low-cost Internet of Things connectivity complements cellular networks, and allows billions of additional devices to participate in the benefits of IoT.”

Sigfox is one of a group of low-power wireless technologies competing to become the network of choice for connecting billions of IoT devices to the cloud. It is proprietary and operates on unlicensed spectrum, as is LoRa, while the licensed-spectrum NB-IoT standard is also gaining traction. There doesn’t necessarily have to be consolidation around one standard but this is often the way these things conclude.