Riverside Public Utilities signs on to use Ingenu's RPMA technology

The city of Riverside, Calif., selected Ingenu's Machine Network to provide network connectivity for the city's electricity distribution infrastructure.

The city is the first customer on the Machine Network in Riverside. Ingenu's Machine Network is powered by its Random Phase Multiple Access (RPMA) technology. The Machine Network uses the city's existing infrastructure to deploy the network access points, which connect a variety of RPMA-enabled devices.

Ingenu says the city is currently using devices such as fault circuit indicators to ensure reliable communication for critical power distribution and has the ability to add applications as requirements change without the need for additional network investment. 

"The Machine Network enhances the city's ability to deliver reliable energy to its over 108,000 residential and business customers and allows for rapid identification and resolution of outage events," said Girish Balachandran, Riverside Public Utilities general manager, in a press release. "Ingenu's RPMA technology provides us with an efficient and powerful solution for electricity distribution monitoring today, and can be scaled to meet our diverse needs into the future."

Ingenu boasts that its Machine Network is the first nationwide wireless public network dedicated entirely to Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) connectivity. The network is currently operating on 38 private networks across the globe, with construction underway on nationwide public networks in more than 20 countries.  

The company, formerly known as On-Ramp Wireless, announced last year that it planned to cover 30 major U.S. metro markets with its Machine Network by the end of 2016. Ingenu's RPMA works in the 2.4 GHz spectrum globally, so one device can work on one frequency throughout the world – and so far, Ingenu intends to keep it that way rather than complicating it with more bands, CEO John Horn recently told FierceWirelessTech. Because Ingenu owns the IP, no one can come from an outside agency, standards board or hardware manufacturer and say, "'we're not going to support or build that anymore,'" he said, adding RPMA is here for the long haul.

That said, Ingenu is likely to see increased competition from Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) technologies that cellular operators expect to roll out. The so-called cellular IoT technologies that fall under the 3GPP standardization umbrella will operate in licensed spectrum.

Just this week, Huawei and Vodafone announced the opening of a new test lab in the UK that's focused on developing products and applications related to NB-IoT.

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