NNNCo, the Australian firm building and operating a shared narrowband long range wide area network for the Internet of Things, has locked in a strategic memorandum of understanding with Hills Limited. It’s a critical deal not only because it will bring Hills’ formidable distribution resources and vertical market access to bear on the IoT in Australia, but also because Hills – an NBN wireless network installer – will be able to help expand the NNNCo footprint.
The MoU sets Hills as the frontline solution provider to the end customer while managing the distribution relationship of IoT product manufacturers and suppliers, including purchasing, distribution and logistics, support, returns and warranty. NNNCo will provide the network and operational management and support of the network as a shared service to customer segments in Australia.
“[Hills] looked at the IoT market itself and saw it was very fragmented, saw what the barriers were around really scalable IoT solutions, networks and devices… there’s stats out in the industry around billions of devices, hundreds of millions in Australia,” NNNCo CEO told CommsDay. “And [Hills] was looking at that saying ‘these devices need to be procured, need to be managed, there needs to be logistics, warranties, support, replacement’… and Hills does a lot of that today. It has some very large product distribution capability: warehousing, logistics, warranty support. And [Hills] looked at what NNNCo was doing, and there was a natural fit – because we can build out the network to support that part of the ecosystem.”
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