India's Tata Communications has revealed plans to build the world's largest IoT network, covering 400 million people in the first-stage rollout alone.
The operator is preparing to deploy India's first IoT network, a low-power wide are network based on LoRa technology, the Hindu Business Line reported.
Tata Comm will invite customers with IoT projects to participate in end-to-end testing of the network, which is being designed for a variety of M2M applications.
According to the report, the network will be a low-power, secure, bidirectional communications system designed to address the growing demand for IoT in sectors including electricity, manufacturing and oil and gas.
The first stage of the rollout will concentrate on Indian cities with a population of 10,000 or more, aiming to cover around a third of India's population.
LoRa technology is capable of supporting communications in deep water and up to 50 meters underground. The signal has a 15km range and can penetrate up to seven walls inside buildings.
Gartner recently predicted that there will be around 25 billion connected things by 2020, the equivalent to three times the world's population as of the present.