Sigfox’s LPWA IoT connectivity will be rolled out to 95 percent of the UK population by 2019 after it signed WND-UK as a new partner operator.
The UK subsidiary of WND, a IoT hardware and software supplier focusing on Sigfox technology, will focus on building a nationwide network in the UK, including rural areas.
Existing partner Arqiva will continue to focus on the UK’s urban areas, having already extended coverage to 30 percent of the population in 11 major cities.
These include London, Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield.
The two companies’ networks will work alongside each other and be fully interoperable for customers.
A Sigfox spokesperson told Mobile Europe that the operator is not looking for other partners in the UK.
The roll-out of Sigfox through distributors such as Arqiva and WND is underpinning major partnerships with telecoms operators, which are offering Sigfox to customers alongside their own connectivity.
In February, Sigfox won a deal with Telefónica that will see the operator’s customers given the option to choose from the operator’s cellular connectivity and Sigfox connectivity, with the ability to combine the two where necessary.
Telia Estonia signed a partnership in March with Connected Baltics, the regional Sigfox operator, as it looks to offer “hundreds of thousands” of connections to enterprise and consumer customers.
A report last year by ABI Research claimed the market share of non-cellular low-power wide-area (LPWA) technologies such as Sigfox will outstrip the share of cellular LPWA technologies by 12 percent by 2021.