machineQ, Comcast’s enterprise-focused Internet of Things division, said it has signed on another wave of customers for its multi-city Low Power Wan Area Network (LPWAN).

The latest batch of customers to join that list and use machineQ’s LoRaWAN network include:

-FAIRWAYiQ, a Massachusetts-based provider of asset tracking that specializes in real-time monitoring and management of golf courses (such as tracking pace of play) and adjacent organizations such as sports stadiums, municipalities, universities, and resorts.

-H2O Degree, a maker of wireless utility sub-metering products for multi-family dwelling and commercial facilities. In addition to tenant billing, those products also support apps such as water leak detection and energy analytics.

-Seco Sys, the company behind HydraCommunity, a water metering platform for mining operations, campuses, and utilities. Its IoT platform reads sensors measuring water quality, temperature, pressure, and tank levels.

-SteamIQ, a Massachusetts-based provider of monitors that track the performance of stream traps (devices that remove condensate moisture form a steam system without losing significant steam energy) that are used in radiators, water heaters, industrial kettles, refineries, sterilizers and turbines.

-Vinduino, a California-based firm that helps agriculture communities, specifically in the vineyard and wine-making industry, more effectively manage water usage through open source technologies.

Those companies build on others that have tapped into machineQ’s network, including Adveez, CareBand, Neptune, Pansofik, Reach, Instapio, PNI Sensor Corp., Coris, and Victor.

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machineQ’s network is up and running in several markets, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Miami, Minneapolis, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Washington D.C.

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Fellow cable operator Cox Communications recently launched Cox2M, an IoT services unit. Dish Network has earmarked dollars for a narrowband IoT offering, and recently acquired Parkifi, a maker of sensors for smart parking lots.

machineQ, Comcast’s enterprise-focused Internet of Things service, has teamed with Neptune Technology Group on smart cities projects focused on advanced water metering and infrastructure.

Under the effort, machineQ’s LoRaWAN network/platform will be integrated with Neptune’s LoRA-enabled water meters and sensors in a way that helps water utilities and municipalities gather data about their infrastructure and use it to optimize their workforces and to boost their sustainability efforts.

They claim that the combination will help water utilities and municipalities leap from manual meter monitoring systems to a more advanced approach that delivers data wirelessly to the cloud for remote monitoring.

Early examples of companies that are taking advantage of the machineQ/Neptune system include Columbus Water Works of Georgia, and Western Municipal Water District in Riverside, Calif.

MachineQ and Neptune are touting the partnership in concert with this week’s American Water Works Association’s annual conference, ACE18, in Las Vegas. They are also sponsoring the event.

Neptune is one of a handful of new business partners that machineQ identified in March.

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Comcast introduced machineQ in 2016 via trials in Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Chicago, and has since rolled out its LoRa-based service to Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Miami, Minneapolis, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Washington D.C.

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“Cities and municipalities are no longer delaying their Smart City programs based on the promise of future network technologies because they see the tremendous cost savings and efficiencies they can realize today from a broad range of existing IoT solutions, from trusted providers like Neptune, that are capable of leveraging the machineQ cloud-based IoT network and platform services,” Alex Khorram, GM of machineQ said in a statement. “We can deploy and manage a dense IoT network tailored to the unique needs of any organization very efficiently, so they can focus their resources delivering the best service possible to their end customers.”

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machineQ, Comcast’s enterprise-focused Internet of Things unit, said it has launched its LoRAWAN-based network in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Its latest deployment, which will focus on area startups and developers and tap into the low-power LoRAWAN network, spans cities such as Cupertino, Hayward, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Oakland, Palo Alto, Redwood City, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale.

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Among early use cases there, PNI Sensor of Santa Rose is using machineQ’s network for PlacePod, a smart parking system that provides real-time vehicle detection and locations of available parking spaces for on- and off-street public and private parking management.

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machineQ’s move into the San Francisco Bay Area follows rollouts that are planned or underway in several other markets, including Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Miami, Minneapolis, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Washington D.C.

“It was a no brainer to deliver a dense IoT network in the Bay Area, the epicenter of IoT, because it reduces costs for developers and startups in the region and opens up new business cases for the solutions they are building,” Alex Khorram, machineQ’s GM, said in a statement. “The early success we’ve had working with solution providers reinforces that there is a need for low-power, cost-effective technologies such as LoRaWAN in the rapidly growing enterprise IoT space here in the U.S. and beyond.”

machineQ, which counts Semtech as a key tech partner, announced the deployment amid its sponsorship of Project Kairos in the Start-Up City Showcase at IoT World, which runs May 16-17 in Santa Clara. 

Semtech Corp., a semiconductor company tied to Comcast’s business-focused IoT activities, said it has accelerated the vesting of the remaining unvested shares from a warrant originally issued in 2016 as Comcast’s machineQ subsidiary prioritizes coverage in its current mix of deployment areas before expanding to more markets.

Semtech said the remaining 586,956 unvested shares have been vested. The warrant is now fully-vested and exercisable for a total of 869,565 shares.

The original 2016 agreement provided a warrant for Comcast to acquire up to $30 million of Semtech common stock, to help facilitate an anticipated network expansion in up to 30 U.S. cities within a period of 30 months following initial trials in Philadelphia and San Francisco.

As a result of today’s announcement, Semtech said it expects to record an expense related to the warrant of $21.5 million, including $15.9 million related to the acceleration, which will be reflected as a reduction to GAAP net sales in the company’s fiscal Q1 quarter. Semtech said it will discuss this in more detail on its scheduled May 30 earnings call.

Comcast has similar warrants agreements with other key suppliers, including Arris, Harmonic and Universal Electronics.

machineQ, Comcast’s enterprise IoT company, is using Semtech’s LoRA devices and wireless RF technology for rollouts underway in several markets, including Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Miami, Minneapolis, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Washington D.C.

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“As its deployment has matured, Comcast has shifted deployment efforts to better target high-value strategic markets by providing extensive coverage within these markets before expanding regional coverage to new markets,” Semtech said in a release.

Semtech said the change in priorities will be of interest to both companies, but were not anticipated in the original terms of the warrant.

“We are pleased with the speed and extensiveness by which Comcast has executed the deployment of Semtech’s LoRa technology to enable its machine platform,” Semtech president and CEO Mohan Maheswaran, said in a statement. “Comcast’s efforts in the deployment of LoRaWAN networks in various U.S. markets is further helping to establish the LoRaWAN protocol as the de facto standard for LPWAN deployments.” 

While it’s not yet clear precisely how much revenue machineQ is bringing in the door yet, the Comcast-owned unit focused on enterprise Internet of Things services, been adding customers at a healthy clip in the early going. 

machineQ said its service, which runs a Low Power Wide Area Network using the LoRaWAN protocol, has  notched deployments with companies focused on areas spanning business asset tracking, rodent control to water service utilities, and has signed on the following as new customers:

-Adveez, an IoT hardware and software solutions provider that monitors a business’s critical assets at locations such as airports, seaports and in cities.

- CareBand, a maker of connected wearables aimed at reducing injuries to seniors due to dementia-related wandering by providing real-time, precise location tracking.

-Neptune, a software and hardware provider to the water industry that serves more than 4,000 utilities across North America. Neptune’s new, LoRa-enabled L900 series of water endpoints supports water meter reading and sensor applications that require low-power consumption and long-range connectivity.

-Pansofik,a developer of digital solutions designed to help small- and mid-sized businesses and building owners integrate IoT and data analytics within their organizations.

-Victor, a maker of rodent control systems is using LoRaWAN-based sensor technologies operating on the machineQ network.

Examples of other known machineQ customers include SteamIQ (stream trap performance monitoring), Reach (lighting control), Instapio (data management), PNI Sensor Corp. (smart parking sensors), and Coris (temperature monitoring tailored for the medical industry). 

machineQ also has tech alliances in place with Semtech (LoRA devices and wireless RF technology) and Murata (electronic components, connectivity modules and power conversion technologies).

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Comcast introduced machineQ in 2016 via trials in Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Chicago, and has since rolled out its LoRa-based service to Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Miami, Minneapolis, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Washington D.C.

Fellow cable operator Cox Communications bowed Cox2M, an IoT services unit, earlier this week. Dish Network, meanwhile, plans to spend big on a wireless network buildout for a narrowband IoT offering, and recently acquired Parkifi, a maker of sensors for smart parking lots.

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“IoT solution providers are seeking secure, reliable and highly scalable network connectivity, device management capabilities, and ‘as-a-service’ IoT network services, like geo-location, to speed their time-to-market, and our new customers have chosen machineQ because it can be deployed across a wide range of different enterprise use cases,” Alex Khorram, general manager of machineQ, said in a statement. “We want IoT solution providers to know that we can handle their network needs, so they can focus on bringing their innovative solutions to market to the benefit of their end users.”

Following a set of market trials, machineQ, a unit of Comcast focused on enterprise Internet of Things services, said it has entered the early stages of its commercial rollout by expanding its reach into a dozen more U.S. markets.

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machineQ, which uses Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technology based on the LoRaWAN protocol, is building and deploying in the following Comcast markets -- Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Washington D.C. Those rollouts follow trials in Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Chicago that got underway last fall.

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“We’re opening shop with commercial services,” Alex Khorram, general manager of machineQ, said.

Early on, machineQ said it has been gathering interest from businesses and organizations across several markets and industries, including healthcare (patient monitoring, laboratory sciences tracking), public utilities (remote utility metering), automotive (asset tracking, telemetry), and smart cities (outdoor lighting, waste management, utility grid monitoring). machineQ is expected to announce more details about those partnerships down the road.

“The big takeaway [from the initial trials] is how creative people are when they are given a tool...and can connect something [they’ve] never connected before,” Khorram said.

He said machineQ achieved a set of goals in its trial work – understanding the market demand for enterprise IoT services, how to build out those services, and to get a fix on the kind of services and business models that would support the underlying offering.

Khorram also acknowledged that the IoT market being pursued by machineQ is at its early stages, but stressed that it makes sense to enter the fray now and to get ahead of the curve at this this phase of the market’s development.

“We're perhaps at the first pitch of the first inning still,” he said, noting that while most Fortune 500 companies have an IoT strategy underway, nearly all of them are in the proof of concept and trial phases. Startups are also part of the mix.

Though machineQ’s main focus is on connectivity (via Comcast’s own network footprint and a look toward bring-your-own-broadband models that can be managed by machineQ) to a new range of devices, it has wider ambitions.

“Our end game is to work at the platform layer and the application layer to make sure that the whole ecosystem benefits from it,” Khorram said.