French IoT firm Kerlink is working with VIoT Group, a specialist in smart urban and industrial park development, to rollout Vietnam’s first nationwide LoRaWan IoT network.

Launched in 2017, VIoT introduced IoT smart-city applications in Vietnam in 2018 with a LoRaWan streetlighting project and has expanded its offer to vertical-market applications such as smart metering by utilities, end-to-end air-water-quality monitoring, and early flood-incident management systems.

The company’s lighting-as-a-service (LaaS) and connectivity-as-a-service (CaaS) business-leasing models will be deployed through its partnership with Kerlink to enable Helium’s HNT blockchain and cryptocurrency mining in peer-to-peer wireless IoT networks. VIoT will thus distribute Kerlink Helium-enabled hotspots and deploy its own IoT network at the same time.

“These deployments will make it possible for Vietnamese factories, businesses, cities and consumers to benefit from cost effective, easy-to-deploy vertical wireless, and to use Helium’s global, decentralised network of hotspots to disrupt traditional telcos’ subscription-based operating models,” said Viet Nguyen, CEO of VIoT Group. “Think AirBnB or Grab for telcos: if I have an empty room, power and internet why would I not use it as a network tower? VIoT Group collaborates with partners and household owners in strategic locations to roll out Helium’s People Network. Our goal is to be the first to leverage this opportunity in Vietnam for corporations and local governments that aim to benefit from the most cost-effective and highly secured blockchain-powered IoT backbone network.”

The company said the initial deployment phase of its LoRaWan, including approximately 350 Kerlink gateways, will be completed by the end of May and will cover six Vietnamese cities and municipalities this year. The second phase will install approximately 1400 additional Kerlink gateways, is expected to be completed by the end of 2022 and cover ten more cities in 2023.

More broadly, the company will market its nationwide managed IoT network for turnkey services mixing sensors, connectivity, integration and applications, such as smart lighting and smart metering, in a single open IoT platform.

Called People’s Network, Helium technology uses the company’s LongFi architecture that combines the LoRaWan wireless protocol (200 times the coverage of the wifi protocol) with the Helium blockchain, enabling any LoRaWan device to transfer data on the Helium network. This connection provides public, long-range and low-power wireless coverage for LoRaWan-enabled IoT sensors and devices because LongFi’s roaming capabilities support micropayment transactions so customers pay only based on network usage.

“Individuals worldwide have used Helium’s network to create more than 642,000 hotspots,” said Rene Arbefeuille, Kerlink’s vice president for Asia Pacific. “The connected hotspots provide cities with miles of low-power network coverage for billions of devices and are paid in Helium’s cryptocurrency, HNT. Kerlink’s industrial-grade indoor Wirnet iFemtoCell and Wirnet iFemtoCell-evolution, as well as carrier-grade outdoor Wirnet iStation IoT gateways, have been enabling the use of HNT cryptocurrency mining on the LoRaWan protocol for the past year.”

More than 200,000 Kerlink installations have been rolled out with over 350 clients in 70 countries. Based in France, with subsidiaries in the USA, Singapore, India and Japan, Kerlink is a co-founder and board member of the LoRa Alliance and the uCIFI Alliance.

VIoT Technology was founded by a group of young Vietnamese-Australian experts with experiences in the field of ICT and IoT developments who share the same vision to unlock the power of AIoT related services for smart urban and industrial park developments. With headquarters and R&D centre in Vietnam and a representative office in Australia, VIoT focuses on developing open AIoT platforms and smart devices to connect and manage wirelessly infrastructure, industrial lights and integrated sensors for the developments of smart factories and cities.

Further, VIoT collaborates with such technology partners as Kerlink, iOmniScient, Innodepth, Intel and QIT+ to roll out open and integrated platforms.