type soci t anonyme industry wireless services founded 2009 founders ludovic le moan and christophe fourtet headquarters lab ge near toulouse france area served global key people ludovic le moan ceo ; anne lauvergeon chairman ; christophe fourtet scientific director services iot revenue 5 million 1 2015 number of employees 190 2 website official website sigfox styled sigfox is a french company that builds wireless networks to connect low energy objects such as electricity meters smartwatches and washing machines which need to be continuously on and emitting small amounts of data . its technology is aimed at the internet of things iot . 3 4 according to cnet sigfox charges 1 per device per year for those with 50 000 or more devices attaching to their managed network . 5 sigfox was founded in 2009 by ludovic le moan and christophe fourtet . 6 a 2015 report noted that france s government has identified the iot sector as an area of strength for the country s startups and that sigfox has emerged as one of the country s biggest names in this field . a round of funding in february of that year was described as france s biggest round of funding ever . 3 sigfox describes itself as the first and only company providing global cellular connectivity for the internet of things . 7 its infrastructure is completely independent of existing networks such as telecommunications networks . sigfox seeks to provide the means for the deployment of billions of objects and thousands of new uses with the long term goal of having petabytes of data produced by everyday objects . 8 contents 1 location 2 funding 3 officers 4 technology 5 coverage 6 sectors 7 associations 7.1 whistlegps 7.2 oceasoft 7.3 mustang project 7.4 talis 7.5 samsung 8 references 9 external links location edit sigfox is based in lab ge in southwestern france at the so called iot valley . 9 10 sigfox has more than 80 employees most of them in lab ge a suburb of toulouse that is a regional tech and startup center . 3 11 12 the firm also has offices in madrid san francisco and at the partech shaker a modern building in central paris designed for startups and international companies . 13 14 15 in 2015 as a consequence of sigfox s partnership with samsung the company announced it would open an r & d centre in paris . 16 funding edit during two rounds of funding sigfox raised 30 million from idinvest partners fsn pme ambition num rique intel capital elaia partners partech and ixo private equity . 3 17 18 it was reported in february 2015 that sigfox in a third round of funding had raised 115 million from seven investors to help it build new networks globally to connect everything from washing machines to smart meters to the internet . 19 20 as of that year it was considering a nasdaq listing . 21 22 the investors were spain s telef nica france s engie ntt docomo ventures docomo capital sk telecom air liquide and elliott management . in june 2015 it was announced samsung had invested an undisclosed amount towards the 115 million fundraising round as well as one other major player like samsung according to techcrunch . 23 reuters noted that the firm planned to roll out its network in 60 countries in the next five years . it was expected that the countries would include the u.s. japan south korea and several latin american nations and that the partnership with elliott would help the firm build credibility in the u.s. and elsewhere . this was described as france s biggest round of funding ever topping the 100 million raised by the european ride sharing leader blablacar the previous summer . 24 25 26 u.s. energy retail and food companies including mcdonald s corp were reported by bloomberg to be interested in the company s technology . at & t and sprint were reported as holding talks with the company . sigfox totalled 3 million in sales in 2013 . 19 the company is considering an initial public offering in 2016 or by mid 2017 ludovic le moan stated to bloomberg . sigfox is seeking a total of 200 300 million during 2015 . 21 officers edit ludovic le moan an engineer with a degree from ensimag is co founder of the firm and serves as its ceo and director . 24 he previously managed the coframi group created anyware technologies and founded goojet now scoop.it . 27 anne lauvergeon is sigfox s chairman a position formerly held by ludovic le moan . she has a background in physics chemistry engineering politics and business . a former executive at several major french firms including areva and a high level position during the administration of fran ois mitterrand she joined sigfox as a member of the board in 2014 . 10 she has been tipped as playing an essential part in the company s fundraising effort working directly with carriers and big companies instead of venture capital funds . 23 in 2009 she was ranked 4th in fortune s ten most powerful international female leaders list . 28 29 christophe fourtet an engineer is scientific director of sigfox . he graduated from insa lyon in electrical and telecommunications sciences and holds a postdoctoral degree in electromagnetism . he has previously worked for dga sagem motorola and freescale semiconductor . he took part in the group that created the motorola cell phone . 30 technology edit sigfox employs a cellular style system that enables remote devices to connect using ultra narrow band unb technology the same used for submarine communications during world war i. 19 as one expert explains m2m and iot will give rise to billions of nodes that require connecting . most of these will require only low bandwidth to transfer small amounts of data . some will also require this to be connected over distances greater than those achievable simply by a transmitter on its own . for many of these applications the traditional cellular phone systems are too complex to allow for very low power operation and too costly to be feasible for many small low cost nodes ... the sigfox network and technology is aimed at the low cost machine to machine application areas where wide area coverage is required . 31 32 33 34 35 in other words sigfox s goal is to develop a system to connect intelligent devices . its network costs are reduced and it requires little energy being termed low power wide area network lpwan . it utilizes a wide reaching signal that passes freely through solid objects what it terms ultra narrowband which consists of free sections of the radio spectrum particularly the ism band . 36 telecommunications companies usually intend on developing shortwaves capable of carrying the largest amount of data possible such as 5g whereas sigfox intends on doing the opposite that is using the longest waves . 28 sigfox posits that their messages can travel up to 1 000 kilometres 620 mi and each base station can handle up to a million objects consuming 1 1000 the energy as a standard cellular system . 37 this means sigfox devices can not carry heavy amounts of data being able to handle approximately 12 bytes per message and at the same time no more than 140 messages per device per day . however this enables the transmission of simple messages . 28 this is due to the fact that with 12 bytes one can represent any number between 1 and 79 octillion which translates as a myriad control codes used for applications such as geolocation and tracking ; monitoring a public defibrillator station to know when someone uses it ; or parking space monitoring and billing . sigfox devices can work up to 20 years off two aa batteries due to the fact it wakes up whenever it sends a message and then it goes back to sleep according to thomas nicholls executive vice president of communications at the company . 36 38 according to machina research an m2m advisory group the year 2024 will see a total of 27 billion m2m connections or 80 billion connected objects 14 % of which will represent lpwa connections like those offered by sigfox and its competitors such as lora and neul huawei . 39 40 like in the cellular market some dual mode modules are available such as the lora sigfox module from nemeus . 41 the m2m segment of the iot market circa 40 % of data 42 according to two estimates will be worth 1.6 1.7 trillion by 2020 . 40 43 coverage edit as of early 2015 sigfox s network covered france 1200 base station towers spain 1300 base station towers the netherlands and ten large british cities in conjunction with arqiva including london manchester and edinburgh . 38 44 45 its coverage extended to several million objects . in spain for example in collaboration with securitas direct and telef nica it has provided block proof iot transmission technology towards a quintuple play service including security broadband telephone mobile and tv . 46 as part of this alliance sigfox has provided devices and signalling for five million apartments with burglary alarms . 24 47 48 sigfox is collaborating with fastprk in moscow having deployed 11 thousand devices that collect real time information about parking spots . 49 starting in 2014 sigfox has been building an ultra narrowband wireless data network in the san francisco bay area the first to achieve such a deployment in the u.s. using the 900mhz band . 50 it announced plans for 1300 base stations to cover a total of 10 cities in the u.s. by early 2016 . 51 by the end of 2016 it promised as many as 4000 stations covering 30 cities with an objective to cover the entire us mainland for less than 50 million . 19 as of may 2015 it counts with 15 base stations in san francisco dedicated to its iot network . 52 53 sigfox announced in june 2015 its arrival in denmark pledging to attain country wide coverage by may 2016 . copenhagen based company iot denmark will provide partial support towards the sigfox network . denmark would thus join the list of countries counting with sigfox iot coverage including the uk us germany italy poland ireland chile and colombia . 5 similarly engie via engie m2m announced its intentions to deploy sigfox s network in belgium by 2017 which would include b2c integration with one of engie s subsidiaries electrabel . 54 sigfox projects its expansion into a total of 50 countries by 2019 . 55 august 2015 saw the announcement luxembourg would become the eighth country to deploy nationwide iot coverage extending coverage that was already in place in the cities of ettelbruck and luxembourg . the deployment would take place in conjunction with post telecom . 56 57 as of january 2016 sigfox had coverage for 92 % of france s population 94 % of spain s and similar numbers for the netherlands . 2 2016 will see the expansion of coverage towards the middle east asia and africa . 2 that same month sigfox announced its partnership with ovh wherein sigfox compatible devices would use the company s paas timeseries iot object database which collects treats and monitors iot data from devices . specifically sigfox seeks to add its more than 7000 temperature sensors to the ovh network for more accurate use . 58 on august 2016 sigfox announced a partnership with taiwanese manufacturer advantech . the deal will launch sigfox s iot network in taiwan wherein advantech will build its base stations . this came one month after sigfox s announcement to move into singapore . advantech will build a reported 450 base stations for the network spanning the whole island . 59 in conjunction with the full taiwanese