Swisscom has started work on its nationwide LoRa network, with plans in place to cover 80 percent of the population by the end of this year.
The operator was one of the founders of the LoRa alliance, which aims to offer the likes of smart cities services to enterprises.
The LoRa network operates on an unlicensed SRD band and sends information with a maximum of 0.5 watts. Swisscom launched a pilot network last spring in Zurich and Geneva.
Since then, more than 100 companies, public sector agencies and universities have expressed an interest in the project, with more than 15 concepts developed, prototyped or launched.
Swisscom said LoRa could help enable the likes of smart parking networks, letterboxes that notify residents of when a delivery is made, and smart rubbish collection.
Other uses could be smart energy networks, cars reporting breakdowns as they happen and sensors giving exact data about the quality of soil to farmers.
Christian Petit, Head of Swisscom Enterprise Customers, said: “In many cases, we only need devices to be able to transmit the smallest units of information. This is precisely why we are setting up this network: in order to efficiently network objects such as fire hydrants, bicycles, umbrellas and much more.”
By the end of this month, Orange, another founding member of the LoRa Alliance, is planning to launch 15 LoRa networks across France, with most of metropolitan France aiming to be covered by the end of June.
Belgian operator Proximus began rolling out its own LoRa-based network last summer.