Adelaide start-up registers 1M devices to IoT network

Fleet Space Technologies team

Australian start-up Fleet Space Technologies has registered one million internet of things (IoT) devices to its network three months after launching its first raft of nano-satellites.

The registrations will allow IoT companies to use the Adelaide-based firm’s existing fleet of four satellites in order to connect to low-power, long-range (LoRaWAN) networks.

Dubbed Project Galaxy, the mass switch-on follows Fleet Space’s launch of its first nano-satellites at the end of last year on board rockets from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, New Zealand-based Rocket Lab and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

Now claiming to have two million devices on a registration waiting list, the company is gearing up to launch 10 more satellites to cater for the demand.

"Project Galaxy booked out within 24 hours with one million devices registered and over two million on the waiting list, this in itself reveals the enormous demand of low-power, cost efficient industrial IoT," Fleet Space Technologies CEO Flavia Tata Nardini said.

According to Fleet Space, uses for its IoT deployments include tracking cattle on Australia’s most remote outback pastures, monitoring temperature fluctuations in Californian bee hives, to safety applications along Canada’s oil pipelines.

Currently 50 million LoRa-based devices are online as of 2018 across a hundred countries.

“For years, the market has faced systems that are too expensive, plagued with limited bandwidth or operating in technology silos,” Tata Nardini added. “Industrial IoT solutions are no longer out of reach, we’re thrilled to be a pioneering ultra-low cost IoT for business across the globe.”