Telecom operator Vodafone today said it is providing managed Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity for operations of Mobike, a bike sharing company, in Singapore.
Mobike, which raised more than US$300 million, including investment from Singapore-based Temasek, said its service will be available in other markets in Asia, Europe and the Americas.
Vodafone IoT connectivity will support features of the Mobike service, the first operations outside of China, including GPS navigation to locate and book an available bike, and the QR code based locking system. A solar panel is powering the GPS system, removing the need for manual charging.
Customers can park Mobikes in any authorized location in a city instead returning bikes to dedicated racks in most popular schemes.
“Mobike has been successful in its home market and we look forward to seeing how our suite of IoT services will be able to help to support its global expansion strategy,” said Vodafone Head of IoT Ivo Rook.
Mobike launched in April 2016 and now operates in 33 cities. It has more than one million bikes in operation, and has completed over 200 million journeys.
Meanwhile, AT&T and IBM announced AT&T IoT analytics capability, a pilot collaboration between the two companies, to assist AT&T’s enterprise customers transform their industrial IoT data into analytic insights.
By using AT&T’s IoT network and IBM Watson Data Platform, AT&T’s IoT analytics solutions will ingest data, creating the models necessary with appropriate machine learning libraries and open-source technology to predict potential failures or machine malfunctions.
In 2016, AT&T and IBM announced plans to integrate AT&T Flow Designer with the IBM Watson IoT Platform and IBM Bluemix, IBM’s Cloud Platform.
