u-blox acquires Thingstream
25 March 2020
News
u-blox has acquired IoT communication-as-a-service provider, Thingstream. Thingstream provides a comprehensive, end-to-end solution for global IoT connectivity using the industry standard MQTT protocol. The product is offered ‘as-a-service’ which provides predictable cost and on-demand scalability for customers.
MQTT, short for message queuing telemetry transport, has become a widely used data transfer protocol in the Internet of Things, along with MQTT-SN, which is tailored to the needs of sensor networks. Designed for constrained environments characterised by low power and bandwidth requirements, MQTT transmits messages from one device to one or many others via a broker.
To achieve reliable machine-to-machine communication, users can set the quality of service to the specific requirements of their applications. Thingstream’s MQTT Anywhere service offers data transfer across 600+ telecom carriers in 190 countries without necessitating a cellular data plan by transmitting MQTT-SN messages over 2G, 3G, LTE and LTE-M networks.
Thomas Seiler, CEO of u-blox.
“The acquisition of Thingstream and its platform accelerates u-blox’s entry into a new dimension of our services business, the IoT Sphere, which will provide customers with a reliable, smart and secure solution to connect sensor data to their cloud enterprise,” said Thomas Seiler, CEO of u-blox. “Our customers can focus on scaling their business rather than the complexities of acquiring and establishing a connectivity platform and maintaining the data flow management.”
u-blox acquired the company for CHF 10 million, plus coverage for some deferred staff retention.
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