The Internet of Very Cold Things: Sigfox extends its low-power radio network to Antarctica

Sigfox, operator of a low-power, wide-area radio network for the Internet of Things, expects to be connecting objects on every continent by year-end, and has just checked off the most challenging of those: Antarctica.

The company's first base station in the southern hemisphere could be a little further south, but not by much: It's at Belgium's Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Research Station, 200 kilometers in from the Antarctic coast, at an altitude of 1,382 meters.

In Antarctica, Sigfox is far from offering the coast-to-coast coverage its networks in France, Spain and Portugal provide: The Princess Elisabeth antenna has a range of about 50 kilometers, which means it would take over a hundred similar transmitters to cover the Antarctic coast, and over a thousand of them to cover the entire landmass -- and that's without worrying about how they would all be installed, maintained and powered. 

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