A Finnish firm called Wirepas has secured money to support its innovative approach to developing an Internet of Things business. Mesh networking, as opposed to Wi-Fi or cellular networks, links millions of things. At a value that we believe to be in the range of $100 million to $200 million, the firm has raised $22 million.
Several intriguing names on the investment list allude to Wirepas’s and its technology’s strategic potential. Highland Europe is heading the round, with participation from former supporters ETF Partners, KPN Ventures (the telecom giant’s investment arm), Vito Ventures, and Vesa Laisi, as well as new sponsors Amalfi IQT (In-Q-Tel, the investment company associated with the CIA in the U.S.).
The financing follows some respectable momentum. Approximately 160 companies (“partners”) use Wirepas’ technology, and 7 million devices are linked. Currently, Australia, Germany, Finland, France, India, and the United States are among the markets it serves.
Among the clients are the NHS, which uses the technology and RFID tags to track equipment; the D4 Industry in Turkey, which follows steel coil and metal sheet supply chains; Finnish manufacturer Schaeffler, which uses the technology to track machine performance; and several energy utilities, which operate intelligent meters.
It appears that the connections that the company’s technology can make are limited to this. In short, mesh is a decentralized design that views any device or node connected to a network as an additional connection access point. In contrast to the conventional hub and spoke paradigm, a wireless network requires considerably fewer base stations to be spread out throughout an area to link devices, and it also improves node connection overall.
According to Wirepas, each of its 16 million networks can accommodate up to 4 billion devices. According to Wirepas, a spinout from Tampere University renowned for its contributions to wireless technology, their method has already been the subject of almost 100 patent applications.
One may wonder: Why and for whom would someone require this?
IoT deployments in enterprises are typically concentrated in industrial settings. In these settings, a company may utilize IoT networks to monitor continuous diagnostics in factories, distant locations, or large regions where personnel may be unable to monitor such devices continuously.
There are also more and more ways for consumers to interact with the Internet of Things: applications allow for the management and linking of connected home gadgets, and suppliers of utilities, security, and other services are also putting in connected devices in houses to raise their service standards.
Even though there are over 15 billion IoT connections, IoT providers only make a small profit. This is because, when it comes to cellular connectivity, the small amounts of extra data that machines use more than cover the costs of setting up base stations and the resources that go on them. It should be highlighted that the overall number of connected devices does not equate to the actual number of IoT nodes in operation.
According to Teppo Hemiä, CEO of Wirepas, the company’s major innovation was improving unit economics through mesh architecture, eliminating the requirement for base stations—regardless of how sophisticated they were in 5G or even 6G services.
“We used software to fix what cellular companies tried to do [in order to reduce the costs] through smaller cells,” the speaker stated. It implies that anything can be connected to this technology.
He thinks the firm has not only discovered a more effective path but has also developed a more robust business plan that modifies and enhances the economics of IoT units. To begin with, the company provides hubs, which businesses may use to construct their networks as and when they expand. As a result, both Wirepas and the client incur much lower service delivery costs. In turn, the business offers the network analytics and incoming connectivity needed to measure consumption, security, and other aspects the customer wants to keep an eye on.
“Wirepas is a technology that pushes the boundaries of what is possible, not simply a little advancement over current technologies. Wirepas addresses the two most significant obstacles to IoT adoption by providing a scalable and reasonably priced solution, according to a statement from Highland Europe partner Laurence Garrett.
