NEWS
Orange Belgium
welcomes
new virtual
operator on its
network: Neibo
Orange Belgium reinforces
its smart-mobility activities
through new investment
The company is helping to
make transport services smarter
throughout Belgium
O
range Belgium and Neibo have
announced that they have reached
an agreement allowing Neibo’s future
customers to use Orange Belgium’s leading
4G network for the coming years.
Orange Belgium is happy to welcome
Neibo, Belgium’s first mobile telephony
cooperative, on its mobile network. Neibo
chose the cooperative model to pursue
a fairer economy with the ambition to
allocate its profits in sustainable and local
businesses only.
Following a call for funds of €250,000,
Neibo is currently putting the final touches
to its commercial offer and as of September
2019, its customers will be able to call, text
and surf seamlessly via the Orange Belgium
network. Neibo called on Effortel, a leading
global Mobile Virtual Network Enabler, to
provide the technology needed to launch
Neibo MVNO.
Werner De Laet, Chief Enterprise,
Innovation and Wholesale Officer of
Orange Belgium, said: “I am very happy to
start this new collaboration with the first
entirely citizen-led cooperative in Belgium.
Thanks to our top-performing 4G network
that covers nearly 100% of the Belgian
population, Neibo’s customers will benefit
from advanced mobile solutions.”
Neibo CEO, Quentin Verstappen, said: “Our
original setup as a full-fledged cooperative
for and by citizens is taking shape and I am
delighted that our customers will be able
to benefit from Orange Belgium’s state-of-
the art mobile network shortly. Effortel’s
thorough expertise and experience in
enabling advanced MVNOs around the world
was also very important to us.”
Arkadi Panitch, CEO of Effortel, said: “As
a specialist in enabling innovative MVNO
business models, we are excited to welcome
a cooperative-based MVNO on our global
platform along with bank, retail, FinTech and
media MVNOs all over the world.”
18
INTELLIGENTCIO
O range Belgium invests directly
into one of its Orange-Fab scale-
ups, CommuniThings, and embarks on
a commercial partnership to market
state-of-the-art smart parking solutions.
Together, Finance.Brussels, Essex
Innovation and Orange Belgium will
inject €3 million into the scale-up. The investment highlights Orange
Belgium’s, CommuniThings’ and Finance.
Brussels’ focus on tackling traffic congestion
and parking-search through state-of-the-art
IoT technology combining IoT sensors and
enriched parking-management solutions.
The solutions cater to cities, parking-lots
and office buildings alike.
In line with Orange’s support of
IoT solutions over its IoT networks,
the investment will be combined
with a long-term partnership to
commercialise CommuniThings’ smart
parking solutions across Belgium. In
addition, the investment will serve
CommuniThings’ global expansion
efforts as it spearheads the rollout of its
platform over IoT networks. Following the launch of Orange Belgium’s
Narrow-band IoT and LTE-M networks,
covering 100% of the Belgian territory,
CommuniThings announced its first
commercial rollout in the city of Liege,
in June 2018. Other cities were quick
to follow, with live projects in Brussels
(disabled zones), St-Ghislain (Shop
and Drive), Aarschot, Asse and Deerlijk.
Additional deployments are under way.
The use of low-power connectivity
in the likes of NB-IoT, LTE-M and
LoRaWAN, enables the rollout of
wireless sensors charged solely by
batteries with a lifespan of five to
seven years. As a result, cities and
enterprises avoid costly investments
in powering and can maintain the
existing infrastructure of repeaters
and gateways. The solutions combine parking guidance
over a mobile application for residents,
while optimising enforcement through
real-time alerts of parking violations
to controllers. CommuniThings offers
open-data reports to other third parties
wishing to refine their mapping and
navigation solutions to its users and
ensures a better mapping of traffic and
mobility over time. n
www.intelligentcio.com