NEWS
Vodacom’s IoT division passes three
million connections milestone
Vodacom continues to lead in
the Internet of Things (IoT), now
connecting more than three million
‘things’ in South Africa and averaging
55,000 new connections per month.
Deon Liebenberg, Managing Executive
for Vodacom IoT says “Vodacom is
pioneering the next wave of connected
things in South Africa. It’s worth noting
that it took us eight years to get to two
million connections and it took us only
one year to get to three million. The
rate of IoT adoption is picking up speed
locally and with the commercial roll-out
of NarrowBand-IoT, this is only going to
accelerate even faster. The Internet of
Things is no longer hype – it’s real and
it’s becoming more and more a part of
our daily lives.”
In February this year, Vodafone
announced that it had become the first
global IoT mobile provider to exceed
50 million connections, demonstrating
growth of around one million new
connections a month, with particularly
strong performance in the automotive,
healthcare and utilities sectors. Vodacom
opened a Narrowband Internet of
Things (NB-IoT) laboratory at its
Vodacom World campus in June to
commercialise machine-to-machine
and IoT systems using Narrowband low
power. Vodacom announced in 2016
that it had started its NB-IoT network
build and it continues to invest in the
expansion of its IoT offering, a key
strategic growth area.
XON and NEC Africa to launch Africa’s
physical and cyber defence centre
XON and NEC Africa will launch their joint
Cyber Defence Operation Centre (CDOC)
on 6 November. The centre will be the
only such facility from a single service
provider in Africa that offers end-to-end
physical and cyber defence services,
with all the underlying IT infrastructure
necessary for a turnkey solution.
The key difference between this and
other similar operations is the bridged
physical and cybersecurity services
combined into a single service focused
on safety and security for organisations
ranging from state entities to individual
commercial operations.
XON and NEC Africa’s centre will provide
world-class service in Africa, from Africa,
and also integrates the dependable
solutions and services of XON’s
enterprise-class systems integration
business for the complete solution.
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INTELLIGENTCIO
“Our customers get the full range of
services and solutions from creating
data centres to field infrastructure and
services, even including alternative
energy, and the networks that connect
everything,” says Bertus Marais, GM
of Public Safety and Security at XON.
“The CDOC unites the worlds of
physical and cybersecurity and includes
analytics and biometrics systems. The
individual services are too numerous
to mention but range from access and
perimeter control and surveillance
to fingerprinting, iris recognition, to
big data analytics to provide facial
recognition at scale, crowd behaviour
monitoring and control, and then
the increasingly crucial cybersecurity
technologies and services.
“Our primary goal in these solutions
and services is to ensure the safety of
people,” concludes Marais.
Bertus Marais, GM of Public Safety and
Security, XON
www.intelligentcio.com