France’s Bouygues Telecom announced the creation of Objenious, a new subsidiary dedicated to its development in the Internet of Things (IoT) space.

In a statement, the operator said the subsidiary will be designed to exploit its LoRa network, the dedicated low-power IoT technology which is currently being rolled out, and will include a team of around 20 employees, headed up by Stephane Allaire, the company’s director of content and services.

Bouygues is one of the founding members of the LoRa Alliance, which launched last year to promote take up of the (non-3GPP based) technology across IoT in the industry.

The launch of Objenious comes after rival Orange said in November it would launch IoT services based on LoRa technology in 16 cities in France in Q1 2016.

It’s worth noting however that Orange suggested it would keep its options open regarding its technology of choice for IoT development in the future. It could move to a 3GPP-based cellular option once commercialisation of technologies such as NB-IoT and LTE-M take hold.

Bouygues said LoRa has already been rolled out in 15 of France’s biggest towns and cities, with the aim of covering 50 per cent of the French population by mid-2016, and its entirety by the end of the year, with 4,000 base stations.

Through Objenious, Bouygues said it was looking at developing solutions to cover “every segment of the IoT value chain”.

This includes; developing sensors to address the needs of its existing customers, giving access to connectivity that benefits from LoRa technology and data management services via its cloud-based IoT platform run by Hewlett Packard Enterprises.

The company added it is also embracing open innovation that is being developed by a growing number of start-ups joining the Objenious program, including building energy management company Energisme and geolocation specialist Abeeway.

Allaire revealed the company had signed partnerships with “some of France’s leading IoT players”.

“We have thus far become a key play based on a national LoRa network and an IoT platform that is now ready to host our customers,” he added.

In the next few weeks, the subsidiary will unveil a catalogue of B2B and B2B2C services to address a number of new services, including vehicle fleet management, remote metre reading, predictive maintenance and geolocation.