On March 24, 2020, NEC Networks & System Integration Corporation, a subsidiary of NEC (日本電気株式会社), a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics group, announced that it will launch the "Symphonict ZETA Closed Platform Service" which enables private enterprise IoT service with "ZETA," one of the LPWA (Low Power Wide Area) connectivity standards that are widely adopted in Japan. The service is announced to be available from March 25.
ZETA features ultra-narrow band multi-channel communication, multi-hop mesh network distributed access, and bi-directional low power communication. This will be provided in combination with NEC Nets SI's enterprise mobile communication service "Nets Wireless" and the DX brand Symphonict communication platform. In private areas such as premises and facilities, a enterprise cloud-based IoT service can be used in a private network that is secured without connecting to the Internet.
Typical use cases of the service include: condition monitoring of public facilities in Toyama, equipment and facility of sports clubs, meter reading and preventive maintenance for substation equipment, and monitoring of environmental parameters for factories, etc.
“A typical deployement digram of the Symphonict Platform”(in Japanese)ZETA is a global LPWAN standard works in the ISM (sub-G and 2.4GHz) bands which is originated from the many years of R&D effort by ZiFiSense. The technology features Ultra-Narrow bands (UNB) channels for spectrum efficiency, distributed lower mesh topology for plug-and-play deployment, sub-dollar cost of end-device in its cheapest version and support of embedded TinyML algorithm upgrade over the air.
Symphonict is NECNetsi's DX business brand. It provides a private enterprise network with cloud- service that offers a closed data communication environment. In combination with the "Nets wireless", an enterprise mobile communication service, the solution provides a dedicated secure network that is disconnected from the public Internet. Through integration both technologies, "Symphonict ZETA Platform" offers the industry a very secure and low cost IoT subscription service. The subscription fee is expected to be, for 10 devices, 119,000 yen per year plus the initial cost of 66,000 yen.
NEC
NEC Corporation (日本電気株式会社, Nippon Denki Kabushiki-gaisha) is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics company, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. It provides IT and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and to government agencies. On July 19, 2018, the 2018 Fortune Global 500 list was released, and NEC ranked 463. In December 2018, the World Brand Lab released the "2018 Top 500 World Brands" list, and NEC ranked 339.
ZETA Alliance
The ZETA Alliance is a cross-industry global alliance that is committed to the promotion of an vibrant technological and commercial ecosystem of low power and wide area IoT solutions based the ZETA LPWAN standard for across a range of industries ranging from smart building, logistics, agriculture , to facility and machine maintenance, with an aim to contribute to the digital transformation of global societies through development of an "Artificial Intelligence + Internet of Things" (AI + IoT) ecosystem.