Telefonica partnered Sigfox to integrate the French company’s low power solutions into its managed connectivity platform, in a bid to “accelerate IoT innovation in the market”.

In a statement, the companies said combining their respective mobile connectivity offerings will mean customers “can benefit from the best of both worlds when developing new IoT solutions”.

Telefonica will use Sigfox’s low power products to develop its own end-to-end IoT systems including device integration, and data collection and management.

The companies are already discussing ways to deliver mass IoT roll-outs across Europe and Latin America, such as including asset tracking and smart metering. Sigfox’s local partner WND opened negotiations with Telefonica’s units in Latin America.

It’s worth noting that Telefonica is an investor in Sigfox.

Sigfox said its unlicensed low power wide area (LPWA) network had always been designed for the “mass IoT” market.

It explained providing both Sigfox solutions and cellular based technologies “in the same IoT devices offer additional security, reliability and anti-jamming.”

Ludovic Le Moan, CEO of Sigfox, added the deal formed part of Telefonica’s global strategy for LPWA, “relying on licenced technology such as NB-IoT and LTE-M, and non-licenced technology such as Sigfox, adopting the most appropriate technology to the use case and customer needs”.

Signing up a tier one operator is a major boost to the firm and follows a deal last year with France’s Altice; the vendor hasn’t scored as many operator deals in the unlicensed LPWA space as rival technology LoRa.

While non-cellular LPWA networks currently dominate the IoT market, Machina Research recently predicted standardised, cellular, systems will eventually win out.