Meet the Biggest Private Wireless Network Operator You’ve Never Heard of

#News(General) [ via IoTGroup ]

It’s a privately held company called Infrastructure Networks, and it’s not in the mobile phone business.
The enormous wireless network owned and operated by Infrastructure Networks is only available to industrial companies like Halliburton and Schlumberger.
That effectively makes Infrastructure Networks a major player in the private wireless networking industry in the US — the company’s network basically eliminates the need for its customers to build their own private networks in hard-to-reach, oil-rich areas of the US.
Infrastructure Networks covers some of the biggest oil and gas areas of the US.
(Source: Infrastructure Networks)
“We didn’t really design the network to provide service to a handset,” explains Stan Hughey, the company’s CTO and co-founder.
He said Infrastructure Networks, founded in 2011, has constructed a 4G LTE network specifically designed for industrial data applications.
Oil pump monitoring, technician communications and video surveillance are the kinds of things Infrastructure Networks’ customers are looking for.
And they’re not in the market for “good enough” services — Hughey said the company often deals in service-level agreements that promise network reliability in the realm of 99.9% or 99.99%.
That funding helped Infrastructure Networks fund a project to expand its coverage area and upgrade its network equipment to “5G-ready” gear.
To put Infrastructure Networks’ 100-tower buildout into perspective, U.S. Cellular counts around 6,500 cell sites in service for its 5 million customers, while Shentel owns or leases around 420 towers for its 1 million-strong customer base.
Infrastructure Networks said its towers are usually 300-400 feet tall.
The interesting part of Infrastructure Networks’ story is how the company sits in the growing trend toward private wireless networks.
Such networks are either being deployed or tested by companies like Ford and Charter, and are intended for internal uses like employee communications or asset monitoring.

Read More..
AutoTextExtraction by Working BoT using SmartNews 1.02976805238 Build 26 Aug 2019