Australian IoT network operator Thinxtra has partnered up with the University of Technology, Sydney, to help accelerate innovation and development of IoT solutions.

This partnership will provide UTS with free access to the Sigfox IoT global network, as part of Thinxtra’s Smart University Partnership Program.

UTS is one of the first five universities in the A/NZ region to sign up to Thinxtra’s initiative, which aims to accelerate the tertiary sector’s contribution to the development of IoT solutions in a number of areas, including smart cities, industrial IoT and agriculture.

UTS’ Faculty of Engineering and IT (FEIT) will be the primary beneficiary of the network access, providing faculty academics, researchers and students access to the Sigfox network via an antenna installed on Building 11.

This new partnership is particularly timely for FEIT, having recently established a new unit, dubbed ‘UTS: Rapido’, whose mandate is to help businesses of all sizes unlock the potential for the Internet of Things.

The unit will call upon a team of engineers and academics researching and developing product-focused technologies to create rapid prototypes for businesses.

Hervé Harvard, FEIT Director of Prototyping, said in a statement: “Access provided by Thinxtra will benefit many R&D projects dedicated to helping Australian business to be faster, smarter and more agile, which will position Australia as a global leader in areas such as agritech, smart mining and logistics, infrastructure monitoring and asset management, and environmental and water monitoring.”

Thinxtra’s VP of ecosystems and marketing Renald Gallis hopes that this new partnership will help foster the relationship between universities and enterprises required to further advance IoT innovation.

“The Thinxtra partnership program will support and enable Australian innovation at its core – universities. Access to a global IoT network such as Sigfox means Australian universities and businesses partnering with them through programs like Rapido can build solutions that can easily be globally exported,” he said.

UTS is certainly giving its patrons plenty of IoT network connectivity choice, with connectivity to The Things Network’s LoRaWAN IoT network, via local company Meshed earlier in the year.