NNNCo says five smart city use cases have been deployed over a LoRaWAN network it installed in Newcastle, just two months after the network was announced by Newcastle City Council.

NNNCo showcased the range of pilot use cases to a delegation of urban leaders from local and state governments organised by the Cities Leadership Institute, an Australian not-for-profit “dedicated to building the capacity of urban leaders to make cities, towns and communities great places.”

These use cases include a smart bin for waste management, smart parking, smart water metering and soil moisture sensing.

A smart tracking system will enable a variety of applications including asset tracking, people movement, cold food chain, logistics and transport is also operating.

“Delegates were able to see working devices in the field and witness the live flow of data from devices through the network and onto NNNCo’s data platform, the N2N … which converts data from any device into a common format and visualisation engine,” it said.

NNNCo CTO Tony Tilbrook said the N2N IoT platform enabled customers to take any certified LoRaWAN device, turn it on, connect it to the network, and receive data that could be easily ingested into their application of choice.

“Solving the ‘data to knowledge’ journey is key to solving cost and complexity issues and enabling the rapid take-up of IoT across industries,” Tilbrook said.

“We know now that we have the capability to scale to millions of devices and millions of messages across industry sectors.”

NNNCo founder and CEO, Rob Zagarella, said the demonstration of multiple applications on the network “shows that we’re not only ready to provide the network access, but also to rapidly deploy and scale solutions for cities.”

He added: “This is about establishing the IoT fabric for cities and very quickly turning on solutions that will improve city efficiencies, sustainability and liveability.”

Newcastle City Council selected NNNCo in early 2018 to provide the network following a tender process.

Newcastle is the second largest non-capital urban centre in Australia. The Newcastle local government area is home to 152,948 people and receives about 4.1 million visitors each year.

In August 2017 Newcastle adopted a smart city strategy, described as a roadmap for creating a smarter and more innovative Newcastle and Hunter Region to maximise opportunities in technology, advanced manufacturing, the digital economy and the creative industries.

That strategy is part of the broader Newcastle 2030 Community Strategic Plan that aims to create a smart, liveable and sustainable city.