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back to article Thing users: you need national narrowband

A couple of Australian telco industry veterans reckon the Internet of Things needs an access network of its own, to meet the requirements of cheap, low-volume traffic. Industry newsletter Communications Day reports today that founder Rob Zagarella told a Communications Alliance workshop that the outfit wants to create an open …

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  1. mathew42
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    Low volume traffic in rural areas? That requires an expensive build out with a long distance between the base station and device.

    We already have mobile phone networks which cover large parts of the country and SMS for sending small pieces of data. If a telco can come up with a plan which enables many devices that support SMS only or a low quota data plan, then I could see that being much quicker to deploy and more viable.

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  2. Charles Manning

    BTLE already has this covered

    You can get BTLE chips for about $2 that include the baseband + a microcontroller + flash + RAM + peripherals from people like nordicsemi. Add a crystal + a few passives and you have everything you need.

    BTLE can communicate up to 100metres. Enough for many applications, even agricultural.

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  3. John Tserkezis

    Good idea, we need some cheap comms methods for iot things, because currently, for Mere Mortal Humans, you're looking at possibly $50-$100+ (and/or WiFi too) to add internet depending on which way you start, and go to. On a per toaster basis, that's bloody expensive outside of the odd project.

    However, since the author mentioned the NBN (and technically didn't have to) I can't help but think, somehow, the goverment is going to get their fingers in that pie and fuck things up.

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