FreeWave Technologies, a leader in industrial, secure Machine to Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) wireless networking solutions, announced a strategic partnership with Baud Telecom Company, one of the largest integrated ICT solution providers in the Middle East. FreeWave and Baud Telecom Company have recently combined their expertise to deliver an extremely rugged, yet flexible, industrial IoT networking solution for Saudi Electric Company (SEC). SEC was the first customer to certify and deploy FreeWave’s new WavePro (WP201) shorthaul Point- to-Point and Wi-Fi hotspot platform. Installed since October 2015 with 100 percent uptime, WavePro provides SEC with an outdoor self-healing network at a remote power plant, enabling the secure collection, control and transport of Voice, Video, Data and Sensor data (VVDS).
“Our customers demand that we deliver the best ICT solutions and services available, and therefore we must be highly selective in the partnerships we create,” explained Omar Al Charif, Telecom Business Unit Manager for BTC. “After rigorous review of many alternatives, we are excited to partner with a reputable industrial IoT communication technology partner such as FreeWave, and are confident that we’ll be able bring the value, high performance, security and reliability that our customers expect.”
The first project for Baud Telecom Company and FreeWave was to provide SEC, the premier power provider in the Gulf, with reliable and secure IoT networking at a remote power plant site in the desert. With constant sand blasts and temperatures rising to 65 degrees Centigrade (145 degrees Fahrenheit), the need to deploy extremely rugged field systems is a must. Additionally, the significant amount of metal located at the power plant made it even more difficult for radio frequency (RF) based communications to work effectively. Despite these challenges, BTC and FreeWave were able to successfully and rapidly deploy a WavePro network to solve the following industrial IoT applications:
- Self-healing Wi-Fi mesh network over the power plant
- Voice over IP (VoIP) communications
- Security camera control and video transport back to a central monitoring center
- SCADA networking for monitoring the inbound water quality for cooling applications
- AMI backhaul networking to help manage energy consumption within the smart grid
- Wi-Fi hotspot for the residents of the neighboring village
Abdul Aziz Al Sultan, telecom engineering and substation automation department manager at SEC/NG SA, said: “We require a robust solution for time-critical applications. With FreeWave WavePro, we are confident that we have found a reliable and flexible platform that can be deployed quickly and cost-effectively integrated into our network.”
By incorporating dual-band, concurrently operational radios (2.4GHz and 5GHz) into an IP67 enclosure, WavePro brings industrial-grade communications to the harshest of environments without fail. It’s an ideal field area network solution for oil and gas, utilities, mining, power plants, municipalities, disaster recovery and many other industrial applications. WavePro is also a global solution, homologating in a number of countries beyond the USA including Canada, LATAM, the Middle East, the Far East and Europe.
“Being able to partner with the premier systems integrator in the Middle East is a significant step forward for FreeWave,” said Kim Niederman, CEO of FreeWave. “We are thrilled for the opportunity to work with Baud Telecom Company and its customers, as we strive to help solve the most complex and demanding industrial IoT networking applications in the world.”
For more information, please visit www.freewave.com.
