melita.io brings LoRaWAN connectivity to Malta

Published by

The Malta Business Weekly

3 years ago

Through LoRaWan networks the agriculture sector where sensors in the ground can help to save up to 30% of water and increase the crop yield

melita.io, which is dedicated to delivering Machine to Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) services to businesses across Europe, is now supporting LoRaWAN (long range wide area network) connectivity in Malta through its dedicated portal.

This development follows melita.io’s roll-out of a LoRaWAN based IoT network across Germany, enabling connectivity between a large number of devices. Through this development companies using LoRaWAN technology can use the melita.io portal they currently use to manage SIM-based IoT applications.

Melita CEO, Harald Roesch, said, “The number of networked devices continues to grow exponentially, and many industrial processes now rely on sensors which communicate with each other to ensure accurate and efficient production. melita.io has already built a significant Internet of Things business using LoRaWAN technology in Germany across multiple sectors, an experience of which Maltese companies can now benefit from.”

LoRaWan is a technology with similar characteristics to Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT): the signal penetrates deep underground or into buildings and consumes very little energy. A sensor using LoRaWan or NB-IoT can live on a battery for 10 years without needing to recharge.

melita.io deployed NB-IoT across Malta and Gozo in 2019; LoRaWan is now being added as an alternative technology because for certain applications there are many sensors using this type of connectivity.

Examples of the benefits these networks can deliver include the agriculture sector where sensors in the ground (that are not connected to the electricity grid) help to save up to 30% of water and can increase the crop yield as fertilization can be optimised based on the data collected by the sensors.

In another example sensors in waste bins indicating the fill-level have helped a customer to increase the collection of recyclable waste by almost 40 per cent while reducing the distance driven for collection by 20 percent, thereby reducing overall carbon emissions.

More information on the melita.io IoT connectivity solutions and portal is available from the website www.melita.io

The Malta Business Weekly

In 1994, the Malta Business Weekly became the first newspaper fully dedicated to business. Today this newspaper is a leader in business and financial news. Together with the launch of the MBW newspaper, the company started organising various business breakfasts to discuss various current issues that were targeting the business community in Malta.