When a smart city deployment is named an IoT breakthrough

We love hearing success stories from our partners, as they disrupt markets with their IoT innovations and bring to life the things we only dreamed of just a decade ago. Micromobility is a fast-growing industry as cities are being forced to deal with challenges like climate impact, traffic jams, and parking. According to a recent Ericsson report, the micromobility market is expected to reach USD 12 billion by 2027 propelled by smart city IoT initiatives seeking to provide convenient, short-range transportation for citizens as part of new urban mobility concepts.  

One such disruptor experiencing great success is micromobillity service provider, Voi. The company was founded in 2018 in Sweden on the premise that micromobility solutions like their connected e-scooters can play a central role in changing how people move within cities of the future. So far, their premise is proving quite correct.

How did Voi do it?

Voi’s business is centered around a fleet of shared electric vehicles that are affordable and carbon-neutral to travel around urban areas and aid in an eventual shift away from cars in the city center while even improving access to all parts of the city. The company is not only enhancing the rider experience but also enabling digital value creation within an ecosystem. This includes being able to provide critical data to cities and municipalities about how their citizens move around. Most important, even though micromobility is still in the early stages, it is a quickly developing, very dynamic market experiencing a steep learning curve – and it‘s really cellular IoT connectivity, digital platforms, and insights generated from data that are facilitating this learning curve.

To enable their fleet of connected scooters, Voi partnered with Arkessa, a leading provider of global cellular IoT connectivity. Reliable and secure connectivity is a critical component. Without it, Voi would not be able to add innovative scooter features such as verification of correct parking or conditional adaptation of capabilities such as speed limits. More classical use cases, including asset management and maintenance processes, also depend on reliable IoT connectivity.

Arkessa’s global connectivity allows Voi to deploy their connected e-scooters anywhere in the world and have them activate, ready to go, right out of the box. Over the course of a scooter’s lifecycle, just one SIM allows the seamless connection to different networks without having to be replaced, which creates significant cost savings.

Voi benefits from Arkessa’s global connectivity management, powered by the Ericsson IoT Accelerator platform, which allows for easy and efficient fleet management and control, at any scale. Features like Trigger Management establish rules to monitor for events including the tampering of SIMs, unusual surges in data traffic, or lapses in connectivity, all of which indicate a scooter may require attention.

Today, Voi’s e-scooters provide short-range travel in more than 70 cities in 11 countries, having served nearly 45 million rides to more than 6 million users. And they are just getting started, which also means that the capability to manage IoT connectivity very efficiently at a large scale is instrumental for their business success.

An IoT breakthrough

In recognition of the advancement to micromobility they provide, Voi’s e-scooter deployments, connected and managed by Arkessa using Ericsson’s IoT platform, collectively were named “Smart City Deployment of the Year” at the 2021 IoT Breakthrough Awards.

Now in its sixth year, the mission of the highly-regarded program is “to recognize the innovators, leaders and visionaries from around the globe in a range of IoT categories, including Industrial and Enterprise IoT, Smart City technology, Connected Home and Home Automation, Connected Car and many more.”

Regarding this win, James Johnson, Managing Director at IoT Breakthrough, said “As cities continue to grow, technology is playing an increasingly important role in improving quality of life. To combat noise, pollution and congestion, city planners are looking to create sustainable, efficient and comfortable access to cities. The ‘15 Minute City’ concept would enable citizens to access their essential living needs by walking, biking, taking public transport or a shared micromobility service. We want to congratulate Ericsson, Voi and Arkessa for working together to create a micromobility service that has the potential to help cities around the world transform their mobility concepts. Together they are our choice for ‘Smart City Deployment of the Year.’”

What it all means

We are very excited about the successes of our partners like Voi and Arkessa. It’s very gratifying to see that our technologies, like the IoT Accelerator, are allowing enterprises and our communications service provider partners to achieve great results and recognition from the industry, as well as effectively generate the revenue potential that IoT ecosystems create.

IoT is destined to keep making industry disruption possible. It’s what it was born to do. New use cases are constantly being created and put to life, making our lives easier, more productive, and safer. We cannot wait to see what innovators like Voi and Arkessa come up with next.

To learn more about the growing micromobility market, please read our report “Connected Micromobility,” created in partnership with Voi.

Read the press release about the IoT Breakthrough Award