cross pond high tech

International cable group Altice has unveiled plans to use the network technology developed by Sigfox to support a range of Internet of Things (IoT) services in France and other markets. 

The strategic alliance promises to pit Altice against French rivals Orange (NYSE: FTE) and Bouygues Telecom in France's fast-developing IoT sector. (See Orange Hails LoRa Breakthrough as Bouygues Ups IoT Game .)

Both Orange and Bouygues have announced IoT plans based around the use of LoRa, a rival to Sigfox in the market for so-called low-power, wide-area (or LPWA) network technologies. 

Owned by French-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi, Altice controls Numericable-SFR , France's second-biggest operator, as well as Portugal Telecom SGPS SA (NYSE: PT), US cable operator Suddenlink Communications and businesses in several smaller markets. It is also trying to finalize a $10 billion takeover of Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC), another US cable company. 

Altice initially appears to be focused on IoT opportunities in France, where Sigfox already claims to cover about 92% of the population with its network, but says it will ultimately bring Sigfox services to all of its markets, including Portugal, the US and Israel. 

Boasting that its 4G network was available to 64% of the French population at the end of 2015, Numericable-SFR is positioning Sigfox as a low-bandwidth "complement" to connectivity services based on 4G and WiFi technologies. 

Like LoRa, Sigfox is designed to support IoT services that require small amounts of bandwidth and more energy-efficient solutions. Market leader Orange claims that LoRa is about 15 times as energy-efficient as cellular technologies and that special LoRa lamps it has developed for use inside buildings are able to carry signals over a distance of one kilometer in rural settings. (See LoRa May Not Be for Long Haul at Orange.)

On the face of it, Orange has made a pretty strong commitment to LoRa, one of a crop of low-power, wide-area (or LPWA) network technologies designed to support more rudimentary Internet of Things (IoT) services. 

In November, the French incumbent revealed it was building a LoRa network in 17 of France's biggest cities and would gradually roll out the network on a nationwide basis thereafter. A few months earlier, its venture capital arm, Orange Digital Ventures, stumped up $3 million of the $25 million in funding then raised by Actility, a French company developing OSS and BSS functionality for LoRa deployments. (See Telcos Invest in IoT Tech Startup.)

Yet Orange (NYSE: FTE) has acknowledged that LoRa is far from ideal. As an "open" technology, it holds strong attractions for the service provider over Sigfox, another LPWA technology that is fully proprietary. But this openness combined with LPWA's reliance on unlicensed spectrum is also problematic, admits Luc Bretones, the executive vice president of Orange's Technocentre-named product and design facilities.