Concrete is the most widely used material in the world after water, yet cement manufacturing, a key ingredient in concrete, is one of the largest sources of global CO₂ emissions. If cement production were a country, it would rank as the third-largest emitter behind China and the United States.
Founded in 2012 in Nova Scotia, CarbonCure Technologies has developed a breakthrough system that injects precise doses of captured CO₂ during concrete manufacturing. The gas mineralizes instantly, becoming permanently embedded in the material. This process not only reduces the carbon footprint but also improves the concrete’s compressive strength, allowing producers to reduce cement usage and further cut emissions.
CarbonCure’s long-term mission is to reduce and remove 500 million metric tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere annually.
To date, CarbonCure’s customers have delivered more than 3.5 million truckloads of concrete infused with its technology, avoiding over 226,000 metric tons of CO₂ emissions. Achieving these results requires complete visibility into the concrete lifecycle to identify every opportunity for efficiency.
“This perspective allows CarbonCure to examine the entire process and pipeline of concrete development to identify potential for efficiency in terms of reducing the carbon footprint,” said Brad Vickers, Sr. Director of Engineering.
CarbonCure’s equipment can be retrofitted into an existing plant in a single visit. The CarbonCure Valve Box connects to an onsite CO₂ tank, automatically injecting the correct dose into fresh concrete or reclaimed wash water. The Control Box integrates with plant batching software, providing real-time visibility into the manufacturing process.
“It’s a process that needs continuous innovation and deployment of hardware,” Vickers added.
Each CarbonCure installation is built as a distributed wireless system. Field units mounted near mixing equipment control the injection process and gather operational data, which is synced to CarbonCure’s command center in real time.
“We can easily see the status of the device, ensure that everything is working correctly, and monitor injection status,” said Stamadianos. “Seeing how much CO₂ goes into every batch of concrete, we can generate carbon credits. Using the data matched with batching information, we can analyze the mix design for its efficiency.”
To collect this data securely — especially from remote sites without internet access — CarbonCure turned to Soracom.
“Our hardware design partner, NeuronicWorks, had worked with Soracom in the past and pointed us to the company,” said Stamadianos. “I saw that with Soracom Beam, we could easily and readily configure the device to talk with an SSL connection. That made our security solution simpler because we no longer needed to manage certificates. Soracom also gave us the ability to use secure web sockets.”
With Soracom Beam, CarbonCure avoided the complexity of building and maintaining a VPN-based architecture, ensuring secure bidirectional communication between field devices and the cloud while supporting global scalability.
More than one million truckloads of concrete have now been delivered using CarbonCure’s system. In April 2021, the company won the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, a 54-month global competition for breakthrough carbon utilization technologies, and has since been recognized for its safety standards and role in major construction projects such as Amazon HQ2 and the LinkedIn Middlefield Campus.
“There’s a lot of potential to build infrastructure that helps CarbonCure scale past their existing PLC solution and create options to help both smaller and larger concrete producers become more sustainable,” said Stamadianos. “The solution that we have is strong, but we need to keep rolling it out and iterating upon it to fully maximize its potential. It’s about continually solving problems and ensuring that we have the hardware and software infrastructure to keep evolving.”
With Soracom as a connectivity partner, CarbonCure can focus on advancing its technology and expanding its reach to help the concrete industry meet the demands of a sustainable future.
Operating offshore oil and chemical plants requires constant monitoring, but keeping human inspectors on-site poses significant cost, safety, and logistical challenges. Transporting crews, often by helicopter or boat, is expensive and vulnerable to weather delays, while the work itself can be hazardous.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) identified an opportunity to reduce these risks by developing an autonomous inspection solution capable of collecting detailed operational data without requiring continuous human presence.
Originally designed in 2014 with Eneos Corporation for nuclear plant inspections, the EX ROVR ASCENT is a fully autonomous, explosion-proof inspection robot now also deployed in oil and chemical plants. Compact at 70 × 45 × 60 cm, it can navigate complex facilities, climb stairs, and operate a pneumatic arm equipped with microphones, multiple cameras, a thermal imaging unit, and a gas concentration sensor.
The robot transmits inspection data, including audio, visual, temperature, and gas readings, to the cloud, where operators can review it in real time. It can operate for two hours per battery charge, with 24/7 coverage possible using paired units.
Future versions are expected to autonomously determine when inspections are needed, further increasing operational efficiency.
The EX ROVR ASCENT required a communications system that could support both remote control and autonomous operation while securely transmitting sensitive industrial data. Rather than build a complex custom infrastructure from scratch, MHI leveraged AWS cloud services combined with Soracom’s IoT platform for end-to-end connectivity and security.
Soracom Air IoT SIMs provide reliable, global cellular coverage. Soracom Gate enables private, bi-directional LAN connections between deployed robots and remote control terminals. Soracom Beam and Soracom Funk handle secure routing and protocol conversion, transmitting telemetry data directly to AWS. The IoT SIMs themselves authenticate and authorize each device.
“We chose Soracom because their wide service area covered all of the countries where we planned to deploy the system, confidential information could be securely communicated through a closed network, and we could rely on extensive support,” said Naoki Mizuno, Equipment Design Section, MHI. “It is very reassuring to have a partner that so thoroughly understands the innermost workings of the EX ROVR ASCENT, and gives us appropriate advice.”
Soracom’s support helped MHI complete the project on schedule while reducing the system’s maintenance burden.
With Soracom managing all communication between the robot, remote terminals, and AWS, MHI has streamlined system architecture and positioned the EX ROVR ASCENT for scale.
The success of the project has sparked interest across MHI in applying Soracom-powered IoT solutions to other products. The company is now exploring ways to use deep learning and signal processing on collected data to detect, predict, and eventually respond to anomalies in real time.
“In addition to anomaly detection, we would also like to focus on how we can create more value from the data collected by sensors,” said Mizuno. “The world is shifting toward the cloud, which has the advantage of consolidating data in one place. This will make the use of data more valuable.”
When expanding into Hamamatsu, the largest city in Shizuoka Prefecture and home to 200,000 propane-using households, residential energy pioneer NICIGAS saw a chance to completely rethink its operations.
Unlike city gas customers clustered in dense areas, propane users are spread out, making door-to-door meter reading costly and inefficient. Regional Head Manager Takeshi Suzuki recognized that traditional methods wouldn’t scale in Hamamatsu’s market.
“We wondered if we could change that conventional business model from ground zero, using the power of IoT and apps,” said Suzuki.
The new Hamamatsu Sales Office would be the prototype for a fully digitalized approach to customer management, billing, and service.
At the heart of the transformation is Space Hotaru, a smart gas meter and Network Control Unit developed with Soracom that automatically collects usage data and detects abnormalities. By transmitting readings over cellular networks, Space Hotaru eliminates the need for monthly in-person visits, cutting costs and improving productivity.
The Hamamatsu office introduced three key “lessening” measures:
These changes reduced clerical workloads to just one-fourth of previous levels and enabled the Hamamatsu office to launch in only 18 months, far faster than the traditional two to four years.
The Space Hotaru project is a collaboration between Nicigas, Unabiz, Kyocera Communications, and Soracom. Using Soracom’s Air service for IoT SIM connectivity, Space Hotaru can transmit reliable, secure meter data across thousands of dispersed locations.
“NICIGAS represents a prime example of the benefits that a smart IoT connectivity platform brings to large-scale deployments,” said Ken Tamagawa, Soracom Co-founder and CEO.
Soracom’s architecture supports massive scaling while maintaining cost control – critical for a rollout that spans tens of thousands of homes.
Going digital has redefined daily operations at Nicigas. Clerks now focus on customer engagement, meter data is collected hourly for more accurate forecasting, and delivery efficiency has improved dramatically, cutting rotation speed by up to 50%.
Customers benefit from transparent usage data in the My NICIGAS app and targeted digital offers, while Nicigas slashes printing and distribution costs.
Following Hamamatsu’s success, Nicigas has begun rolling out the model to other offices, with ambitions to share the system beyond the gas industry.
“The keyword for the future is co-creation, not competition,” said Suzuki. “We hope that Space Hotaru and our cashless and paperless systems will be utilized by companies all over Japan.”
Japan’s plan to phase out gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035 is central to its 2050 carbon-neutral goal. But adoption of electric vehicles has lagged, especially in urban apartments and condominiums where shared charging stations are rare.
Without home charging access, EV owners often rely on public stations or dealerships, facing long charging times and added inconvenience. Today, 90% of Japanese EV owners live in single-family homes, leaving a huge untapped market in multi-unit housing.
“Ideally, people who live in condominiums should be able to fully charge their cars at home,” said Nobuyuki Ura, Founder of YourStand.
Founded in 2018, YourStand developed a proprietary IoT system that allows users to reserve, operate, and pay for EV charging stations directly from their smartphones.
The YourStand App enables:
The company also installs chargers in condominiums and office buildings, handling end-to-end services from site surveys and subsidy applications to proposals for property managers.
After several prototypes, YourStand settled on a Raspberry Pi–based design with Soracom connectivity built in, making it scalable and easy to manage.
“There was an atmosphere that if it was IoT, it was Soracom,” said Yuta Mochizuki, Technical Development Lead at YourStand.
YourStand relies on Soracom Air for secure, reliable device-to-cloud communication, and Soracom Napter for on-demand remote access, enabling updates, firmware upgrades, and troubleshooting without visiting each site.
Previously, maintenance required in-person visits to every condominium. Now, with Napter, YourStand’s specialists can resolve issues from their office or home. Electricians performing on-site work can even plug in a Soracom USB dongle to allow remote specialists to repair devices in real time.
By the end of 2021, YourStand’s system was installed in 150 condominiums across the Tokyo metro area, with expansion planned for Osaka, Nagoya, Hokkaido, and beyond. The company has also seen a surge in customer interest following Japan’s carbon neutrality policies.
“We have even heard from people who bought EVs after the chargers were installed in their condominiums,” said Denise Chia, PR Manager at YourStand.
Looking ahead, YourStand aims to integrate chargers into new condo construction, office buildings, and commercial facilities — using Soracom’s secure connectivity to keep operations streamlined as they scale.
The European road freight market is projected to reach €340 billion in value, driven by steady growth and the essential role of trucking, utilities, and shipping in the modern economy.
But growth brings risk. Cargo theft remains a persistent problem, with an average cost of over $186,000 USD per incident. Fleet operators need to know where their vehicles and assets are at all times, and to recover them quickly if stolen.
With IoT-enabled tracking, fleet owners can now monitor location, speed, and route in real time, ensuring both on-time deliveries and enhanced security.
Mobile Objects delivers customizable GPS and asset tracking solutions through its SaaS platform, mOTelematix. These devices, available in standard and outdoor models, are:
Once installed, the trackers send real-time location and movement data to a central web or mobile app, where operators can:
With their long battery life, rugged design, and flexible deployment, these trackers fit seamlessly into any fleet or asset management operation.
To keep fleets connected across national borders, Mobile Objects uses Soracom Ar for global cellular service in 150+ countries with a single APN and multi-operator coverage. This ensures consistent tracking for assets traveling within or between countries.
Soracom’s platform also offers:
With Soracom, Mobile Objects can deliver the reliable, borderless tracking that modern fleets require.
Celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2021, Mobile Objects continues to serve customers primarily in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria — with expansion on the horizon.
“We expect to grow our customer base significantly over the next 24 months,” said Denk. “So the global support Soracom offers will be welcome in the future.”
With Soracom’s secure connectivity and scalable platform, Mobile Objects is positioned to keep fleets connected, secure, and efficient wherever they travel.
In sectors like manufacturing, mining, construction, and chemical production, poor air quality can impact worker safety, productivity, and regulatory compliance, sometimes with severe financial and legal consequences.
The urgency has only increased in the wake of COVID-19, which has highlighted the dangers of airborne contaminants in enclosed spaces. Manual air quality monitoring can expose staff to hazards, and record-keeping errors risk both safety and compliance.
The solution? A continuous, reliable, automated monitoring system that can gather and transmit environmental data without requiring workers to enter dangerous or hard-to-reach areas.
Boston- and Seattle-based Charge Analytics delivers IoT-powered environmental and process monitoring systems designed for safety, efficiency, and simplicity.
Key capabilities include:
With over 25 years in pollution control, founder Ed Cline designed Charge Analytics systems for ease of installation, minimal upfront costs, and low subscription fees, ensuring industrial facilities can deploy quickly, scale affordably, and comply with environmental regulations without disrupting operations.
“Cellular connectivity is a critical component of our system. It enables important plant data to be available remotely, from the convenience of any device, anywhere,” said Ed Cline, Founder & Technical Director, Charge Analytics.
Many industrial sites are too remote for Wi-Fi, or have spotty coverage and security concerns even when wireless is available. Charge Analytics relies on Soracom Air for secure, multicarrier cellular connectivity that ensures devices can transmit data from anywhere to Azure.
Soracom delivers additional advantages:
The result is a cost-effective, scalable connectivity model that meets strict budget requirements without compromising performance.
Charge Analytics now helps industrial facilities and equipment manufacturers protect their workforce, comply with environmental regulations, and reduce operating costs through its cloud-powered IoT platform.
“Our turnkey systems provide valuable, reliable, and consistent predictive data,” says Gerry Kaelin, Director of Business Development. “Accurate plant data is securely delivered whenever or wherever it is needed. Uptime is maximized, while operating costs are minimized.”
The platform has eliminated the need for manual data logging, enabled monitoring in hazardous or remote areas, and delivered a clear, rapid return on investment for customers.
Looking ahead, Charge Analytics is developing a low-power LTE-M device capable of prolonged battery operation, potentially enhanced by Soracom Beam to enable lightweight protocols like UDP while delivering secure HTTPS to Azure.
With environmental pressures increasing and demand for automation rising, Charge Analytics is well-positioned to lead the next wave of Industrial IoT adoption.
Concrete is the foundation of modern life—but it’s also one of the world’s largest sources of carbon emissions. Increasing structural durability can reduce costly remediation, minimize safety risks, and limit environmental impact.
Toronto-based EXACT Technology offers a data-driven solution that helps construction teams build faster, safer, and more sustainably. By monitoring concrete during its critical curing period, EXACT enables engineers to meet precise temperature specifications that can extend a structure’s lifespan to over a century.
“If you monitor that concrete while it’s being placed for the first seven days, and you keep the temperature within certain constraints, you will get 125 years of a lifespan out of your bridge, dam, building, or tunnel,” said Jordan Korenzvit, CEO and co-founder of EXACT.
EXACT Technology was born from a practical challenge: large-scale projects had no efficient way to monitor thousands of concrete pours with multiple temperature checkpoints. Existing solutions relied on decades-old data loggers and manual site visits to collect readings – costly, slow, and prone to human error.
Korenzvit and co-founder Stacia van Zetten developed a simple prototype that delivered real-time, 15-minute interval temperature data online. The pilot installation proved an immediate success, winning a purchase order for a multi-billion-dollar subway project.
Today, EXACT’s solutions provide:
This real-time visibility helps builders address problems early, reduce costs, improve safety, and maximize project lifespan.
Global-scale construction projects require industrial-grade connectivity. Early carrier partners failed to deliver – one even went bankrupt, forcing the recall of 100 devices. EXACT needed a partner with stability, coverage, and flexibility.
Soracom met all of those needs:
“With Soracom, we can say from the beginning that we control data communication from beginning to end. Our customers just plug it in. And Soracom only charges us when they use the service. It’s exactly the way we charge our clients,” said Korenzvit.
EXACT now monitors over $20 billion in public and private construction projects, with strong adoption in North America and Australia. A 2021 acquisition of Products Engineering, Inc. brought more than 50 years of precast industry relationships, accelerating U.S. market penetration.
While international expansion has not been a primary focus, demand is emerging organically—and Soracom’s connectivity ensures EXACT can deliver anywhere concrete is poured.
“As we get deeper into the American market, connectivity is key. We need to be present on certain networks, especially in rural areas where cellular access is sparse,” said Korenzvit.
Facility managers face constant pressure to keep properties clean, safe, and welcoming while also optimizing labor costs and supply use. Traditional custodial schedules often rely on fixed routines rather than real-time needs, which can waste resources and overlook high-traffic areas.
Zan Compute recognized an opportunity to transform this process. By combining IoT sensors with AI, they deliver real-time insight into facility conditions, ensuring cleaning crews know exactly when and where their attention is needed.
“Occupants benefit because they get a much better experience in the property,” says Zan Compute CEO, Sridharan Mani.
Zan Compute deploys a network of smart sensors that continuously monitor building usage and conditions. These sensors feed data into a powerful AI backend that predicts cleaning needs, optimizes labor schedules, and reduces waste in supplies.
But this intelligence depends on reliable, secure connectivity. Wi-Fi onboarding often poses problems with reliability, security, and IT oversight. To solve this, Zan Compute’s sensors connect to gateways that transmit data over cellular networks, powered by Soracom.
Soracom’s IoT platform provides:
Beyond affordable IoT connectivity, Soracom delivers the management tools Zan Compute needs to operate globally at scale. The built-in console and APIs give the team full visibility across devices, while advanced services like Soracom Peek add new diagnostic capabilities without additional infrastructure.
For Zan Compute, this combination means less time managing connectivity and more time improving their AI-powered platform.
Today, Zan Compute helps facility managers optimize labor, reduce supply costs, and improve building hygiene—at a time when health and safety have never been more important.
“We believe that, post-COVID, demand for our solution is going to grow multi-fold,” says Sridharan. “We see significant growth potential in the coming year.”
From office buildings to public spaces, Zan Compute is leading the way toward smarter, safer, and more sustainable custodial operations. For property owners, that means lower costs and improved outcomes. For everyone else, it simply means a world that’s a little bit cleaner.
Cities around the world face mounting pressure to modernize infrastructure and deliver higher-quality public services while managing resources responsibly. The global IoT in Smart Cities market is projected to more than double to $260B, fueled by government initiatives to adopt intelligent, connected technologies.
Since 2015, Omniflow, based in Porto, Portugal, has led the way in reimagining public infrastructure with aesthetically pleasing, carbon-neutral technology. Their flagship innovation, a vertical-axis wind turbine combined with solar energy, reduces the visual impact of windmills while enabling urban and rural renewable power generation.
Building on that foundation, Omniflow now offers smart lampposts that integrate multiple services: public Wi-Fi, USB charging stations, small-cell base stations, smart parking, license plate recognition, fire detection, crowd monitoring, and more.
“Smart cities are our main driver as we can retrofit existing lighting systems into smart IoT lampposts, so in the end, the general population is the beneficiary for our solution,” says Pedro Ruão, Omniflow Founder and CEO. “We see average power savings of more than 90% on every installation.”
Omniflow’s patented hybrid system enables cities to replace basic streetlights with multi-service, renewable-powered infrastructure that pays dividends in sustainability and functionality.
“Our mission is to have a positive impact in the world, avoiding CO2 emissions and expanding digitalization,” says Ruão.
Each lamppost doubles as an IoT hub, enabling motion sensing, air quality monitoring, security functions, and data-driven insights via customer dashboards. These dashboards, supported by Soracom’s software-defined infrastructure, provide transparency, diagnostics, and reporting critical to city operations.
Reliable connectivity is non-negotiable. From lighting and communications to surveillance, Omniflow’s devices must deliver 99.99% uptime to maintain essential city services.
“We use cellular connectivity in two ways: first, as IoT communication with our dashboard to monitor and control devices, and second, as a service we provide to customers,” Ruão explains.
To ensure seamless performance across continents, Omniflow relies on Soracom for secure, scalable IoT connectivity.
“Assuring the connectivity to our devices is crucial as communication is part of their operating mode. With Soracom we get access to management tools and collect essential data all over the globe,” says Ruão. “Soracom makes a robust, thoughtful, and high-integrity product possible.”
Before Soracom, Omniflow worked with a patchwork of providers, creating unnecessary complexity and downtime risk. Soracom’s uniform global network and management console eliminated those obstacles while reducing costs.
Today, Omniflow has deployed thousands of smart lampposts across 30+ countries, from Europe and the US to Asia and Latin America. Cities and enterprises alike are using Omniflow to combine energy efficiency with new layers of public services.
Examples include:
“Before Soracom, we were lacking a uniform and global connectivity service,” says Ruão. “The global network and price are only the beginning of Soracom’s value add. Their support lets us scale globally while adapting to local needs.”
With Soracom’s connectivity powering its solutions, Omniflow is helping cities everywhere step into the future, delivering energy efficiency, public safety, and digital services, all while reducing carbon emissions.
Every year, one-third of food grown worldwide never gets eaten, representing hundreds of billions of dollars in losses. In the US alone, stored grain spoilage and infestation account for more than $12 billion annually.
Based in Sunnyvale, CA, TeleSense applies cutting-edge IoT technology to this challenge. Their post-harvest monitoring systems help grain handlers, co-ops, merchandisers, and transporters monitor storage conditions in real time, enabling data-driven decisions that extend shelf life and reduce waste.
Stored grain is highly valuable, but keeping it safe over long periods is notoriously difficult. Hidden deep inside massive silos, grain can rot or attract pests without visible signs until it’s too late.
Traditional monitoring requires manual checks for temperature and moisture – costly, labor-intensive, and providing only intermittent data points. Farmers needed a more scalable, continuous, and reliable way to safeguard their crops.
TeleSense created a suite of hardware and software that continuously monitors storage conditions without requiring fixed connections.
With continuous monitoring, users receive real-time alerts to address issues before spoilage occurs and can make smarter inventory decisions, such as prioritizing which grain to sell first. The result: less waste, lower energy costs, and higher margins per bushel.
TeleSense chose Soracom to provide reliable connectivity where it’s needed most – in rural storage sites and along transport routes.
With global demand for staple crops rising and arable land finite, improving storage efficiency is critical to feeding a growing population. TeleSense is expanding its platform with new automation features and advanced analytics to deliver even greater visibility and resilience across the global food supply chain.