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A nationwide coverage of the Netherlands in a wireless Internet of things (IoT) network was completed last month. The network can connect sensors monitoring everything from rail station switches to home security devices and airport baggage handling.

According to the Technology Review, this has been part of a world trend, encompassing new similar networks in France, Germany, South Korea, and elsewhere across the globe.

So far, Dutch telco KPN, who built this infrastructure, has contracts inked to connect 1.5 million devices,but not all of them are yet connected.  

A variety of potential customers include governments, which use sensors to monitor infrastructure; corporations, like Ziut, a specialist in lighting, traffic control, and security, which uses IoT sensors to dynamically control lighting intensity along bike paths in Rotterdam; and consumers.

The IoT network operates on unlicensed frequencies. To recoup its investment, KPN will charge a subscription for each device on the network, currently between about $4.50 and $16.50 per year, depending on data requirements.

A spokesman from Clickey, a designer of hardware devices for KPN and other IoT networks, estimates that for network growth to accelerate, says de Smit, a few things are necessary. The first is for the KPN network to enable location-based features, which would, for instance, allow a shipping container to be tracked in transit across the country—something expected to go live before the end of 2016. The second is IoT coverage beyond national borders. Siemens, Shimano, and other large companies are very interested in gaining access to IoT networks, but only when there is enough geographic coverage. That may take a few years.

KPN is not the only company building out the IoT. SigFox, a French startup, claims its competing wireless grid already covers 340 million people in parts of 22 countries.

It is evaluated that if subscription price for each connected device is lowered quickly – early adaptors would move onto the network in high volume and attract new users.

SigFox’s largest customers pay subscription fees of $1 per device per year, and make up a substantial proportion of the 7 million registered subscriptions that SigFox has already collected, according to the company. The company estimates that covering the cost of building a nationwide network in a country like France, Germany, or Spain requires only “a few million” subscriptions.

One early adopter is home security company Securitas Direct, which has a million anti-burglary devices connected to SigFox systems in Spain, and another 200,000 devices on its French network. The Technology Review estimates that it will take more time, and more networks, before we know whether these IoT devices and others will add up to the 30 to 100 billion connected things, analysts predict will come online within a decade.