Innovation & Technology

HPE and Tata Communications Now Building the First Large Scale LoRaWAN Command Center

by Nigel Upton, General Manager, Universal IoT Platform, HPE
Jul 5, 2017 10:15 AM ET
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HPE and Tata Communications announced at Mobile World Congress, less than three months ago, a new relationship enabling the world’s largest LoRa network deployment, initially targeting over 400 million people. Three months is a long time in the Internet of Things (IoT) world for Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Tata Communications. Of late, we have been busy creating the world’s next first. This time we focused on ‘Command and Control’.

Today, we’re proud to share our latest news, HPE and Tata Communications have implemented the world’s first LoRaWAN™ based Integrated City Management. Jamshedpur, India. Truly taking a Steel City and transforming it into one of the regions first Smart Cities.

Let’s Start with LoRaWAN

LoRaWAN is a Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) specification for wireless battery operated IoT devices, targeting key IoT requirements such as secure bi-directional communication, mobility and localization services. It is being adopted as a standard for connecting LPWAN IoT devices and sensors, complementing other connectivity options such as LTE, Wi-Fi and more.

Implementing LoRaWAN

Back in February, at Mobile World Congress, we announced that Tata Communications selected HPE’s Universal IoT (UIoT) Platform to help connect devices, applications and other IoT solutions over the LoRa network in smart buildings, campus, utilities, fleet management, security and healthcare services across more than 2,000 communities. Today, we’re working with JUSCO, a Tata Group Enterprise, to roll out the first Smart City Command Center based on LoRaWAN standards in Jamshedpur, India.

What is a Smart City Command Center?

Essentially, Jamshedpur Utility Services Company (JUSCO) will be aggregating a diverse spectrum of field sensors, gateways and devices, and integrating multiple data sources to be seamlessly managed by JUSCO. We’ll be using more than 100,000 sensors and gateways to digitize 15 infrastructure solutions including street lights, utilities and parking meters, all managed by HPE’s UIoT Platform.

In addition to improving basic utility functionality, aggregating all this nascent information into one center, the Smart City Command Center, will allow JUSCO to easily manage, maintain and monetize new services. The goal – to help reduce the city’s energy use, increase efficiency for waste management and make construction zones safer, among other benefits.

The work in Jamshedpur is underway now, and will continue for the next 12-18 months until all necessary devices and sensors are connected to the HPE UIoT Platform.

More to come

This signals so much more to come.  As Smart Cities evolve, new use cases and requirements are accelerating. The use cases are only limited by our imagination.  Digitization changes how we see problems and opportunities. Our citizen’s needs are changing, from transport, where we choose to live, what services we require and want issues are important for our own unique cities.

These changes bring opportunity to us all and HPE and Tata Communications are seizing on the new opportunities to innovate rapidly, try new things, and fail if we must, but fail fast and learn from the failures. You will continue to see new innovations from HPE and Tata Communications, we are jointly committed to try new ideas, build new solutions, and do this at a scale never seen before.

Wish us luck, this is an incredible journey.

Additional resources:

Learn more at hpe.com/CSP/IoT