Belgian Telco Proximus Rolls Out IoT Network With MongoDB

And, of course, there was the challenge of how to handle the vast quantities of data.

To begin, the team had to make a choice between the technologies that were available at that point in time – opting for a MongoDB database.

“It wasn’t difficult but it took a bit of time to carry out an investigation,” Tissaun explains. “The biggest issue we have today is with the hardware because we have connectivity and we have the network. We have the MIDAS platform. But the one thing missing is the hardware and if you don’t have all the building blocks it’s difficult to build the complete solution.

Proximus started working with MongoDB about a year and a half ago and has been in production since December 2015.

No problem

Dave De Groote, software engineer at Proximus partner Ordina, says that, so far, it’s been a problem-free project.

“Maybe that’s a weird case but we’ve been running in production for a year now and we haven’t had any problems,” he says. “MongoDB consultants helped us initially by setting up a good model to begin with, choosing the right storage engine and helping us with indexing.”

Proximus has also been happy with MongoDB’s flexibility. De Groote explains: “Certainly when we have a lot of different types of devices we want our data scheme to be as flexible as possible. We need the ability to put anything in MongoDB without making a lot of changes. But now we have found a good model that really suits us.

“It gives us the ability to put in any kind of data we want – any type of sensor data inside that system. It was actually the flexibility and the scale that led to us choosing MongoDB. You can put, millions, billions of records in, create a good query and bam, you have your results. We first started out just using MySQL but experience taught us that was not a good idea because the data volume just kept on rising, so we needed a good, solid technology to support our needs. MongoDB also has a very broad features set.”

Now, Proximus offers companies all the necessary building blocks for a customised IoT solution. Its staff and company partners can help customers look for the right combination of LoRa and existing M2M (2G/3G/4G), Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

The scope of the project can then be defined to allow Proximus to develop a successful business case. Implementations are then fully supervised by the telco, with continuous support offered to companies to ensure the successful realisation of the projects.

But this is really just the beginning of Proximus’ IoT work, according to De Groote.

“There’s a lot more to come from our IoT network,” he promises,. “Now we have a big data set, but not that big. That’s the next hurdle for us. And some features will be added to the platform itself, so it’s not done. It’s a living product.”

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