Altice Portugal and Cisco present state-of-the-art IoT solution

The Mobile World Congress 2018 was the stage chosen for the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Altice Portugal and Cisco. In this event, the two partners shared a space to demonstrate the new NB-IoT service, the first use case included in this MoU, signed on February 27th, which aims to accelerate the development of IoT.

Reinforcing its consolidated strategy of association with the most prestigious technological events, Altice Portugal was at the Mobile World Congress 2018, in which it entered into the MoU with Cisco.

To put the commitment established in this memorandum into practice, in collaboration with Janz, Altice Portugal and Cisco showed a state-of-the-art IoT solution during the event. The solution consists of a proof of concept of Water Telemetry to explore the capabilities of the Cisco Ultra IoT system, aimed at launching new IoT services. The Cisco system ensures mobile data switching, based on the StarOS virtualisation environment, is capable of 5G and enables the availability of the new mobile network protocols targeted at IoT, namely NarrowBand-IoT (NB-IoT) and is complemented by the eSCEF module.

NB-IoT is a new connectivity technology suitable for IoT applications, allowing communications in a system with low consumption of equipment’s batteries and enabling the increased life of IoT equipment.

The Water Telemetry solution which has been developed effectively tests this new technology as it requires standalone battery-powered equipment capable of withstanding high autonomy, often installed in hard-to-reach locations with broad coverage needs. There are numerous case studies in the IoT area, such as gas and electricity metering, intelligent parking, asset and animal tracking, or the safety of people which can benefit from NB-IoT technology.

“Cisco is a key partner in our IoT ecosystem and the new Mobile Data Switching System will be instrumental in enabling the rapid development of IoT applications. The proof of concept that has been developed clearly demonstrates the architecture’s ability to effectively support a range of low power solutions, among which Water Telemetry is an eloquent example,” said Luís Alveirinho, Altice’s Chief Technology Officer, Portugal.

“Altice Portugal is moving forward with IoT and therefore, positioning itself more than ever for the digitisation and transformation of its business,” said Yves Padrines, Vice President of Global Services EMEAR, Cisco. “We are thrilled with the possibilities this innovative proof of concept opens and we are certain that it will help deliver secure IoT solutions across a broad range of vertical markets spanning different service classes.”