Flashnet, the Romanian company behind the inteliLIGHT street lighting system, has joined Netmore’s partner programme, linking its lamppost controllers to the Swedish operator’s LoRaWAN networks. LoRaWAN is a low-power radio network built for devices that send small amounts of data over long distances, and Netmore runs it as a paid service in 18 countries.
Under the deal, which the companies announced on 1 September, Flashnet gets access to Netmore’s technical support, operations help and joint marketing, while Netmore gains another application to run across its networks. That would make it a fairly modest partnership if it stood alone, but set against everything Netmore has done this year, it looks more like one piece of a much larger plan.
Who Flashnet Is
Start with the partner, which is bigger than its low profile suggests. Founded in 2005 in Brașov, Romania, Flashnet says its platform now manages more than 1.5 million connected streetlights in more than 150 cities across over 60 countries, including Washington, Brussels, Jeddah, Athens and Reykjavík.
It also has a claim to LoRaWAN history: the company says it introduced the world’s first LoRaWAN street lighting controller in 2015. French energy group ENGIE bought a majority stake in 2018, and in 2022 British electrical engineering firm Lucy Group took control, buying an 80 percent stake from ENGIE and two minority shareholders.
Its controllers are not tied to one network either, since inteliLIGHT supports LoRaWAN alongside the mobile-operator IoT networks NB-IoT and LTE-M, which matters because cities rarely agree on a single way to connect their lampposts.
Netmore Is Consolidating The LoRaWAN Market
The bigger story sits on the other side of the deal. In January, Netmore acquired Actility, one of the original architects of LoRaWAN and the company behind ThingPark, a platform that runs many of the world’s public LoRaWAN networks. The combined business counts more than 14 million contracted devices, deployments in over 100 countries and partnerships with more than 50 network operators.
A month later it launched Pulse, the partner programme Flashnet has joined, with tracks for device makers, resellers and institutions and a target list that runs from water and electricity utilities to cities, buildings and asset tracking. Netmore says it already works with more than 200 ecosystem partners.
Its customer wins point the same way: Netmore runs the network behind Yorkshire Water’s 1.3 million meter replacement and Severn Trent’s one-million-meter rollout in Britain, and in August it won Aarhus Vand’s contract to connect 69,000 water meters in Denmark.
There is a nice irony in the partnership, too: Flashnet’s earlier LoRaWAN tie-up was with Actility, which built a demo kit combining inteliLIGHT controllers with its network software. With Actility now inside Netmore, Flashnet is effectively signing up with the same partner under a new owner, but one that also operates networks rather than just supplying software.
Why Streetlights Matter To A Network Operator
For an operator like Netmore, streetlights make an attractive tenant, because they sit on every street, have mains power, stay in place for decades and send small, regular messages about status, energy use and faults, which is exactly the traffic LoRaWAN’s designers had in mind.
That market is also growing fast, and as we reported in cellular moves up the lamppost, Berg Insight expects the number of connected streetlights worldwide to more than double from 38.5 million at the end of 2025 to 87.6 million by 2030.
LoRaWAN is not winning it by default, though, and in Berg’s figures proprietary radio mesh networks still connect just over half of smart streetlights, cellular is second and rising because cities can install controllers without building any network, and LoRaWAN is third, though gaining ground.
The leading vendors show how different those bets are: Signify and Itron, first and second in Berg’s ranking, compete with challengers such as Ubicquia, whose UbiCell controller carries an LTE link built in, so a city can manage its lights over a mobile network from day one.
Standards are making those choices less permanent, as many new streetlights come with a standard socket on top, defined by industry groups Zhaga and the DALI Alliance, which lets a city plug in a controller from one vendor today and swap it for another later, including one that uses a different network.
That is the gap Netmore wants to close, since a city that wants LoRaWAN lighting today often has to build and maintain its own gateways, which is precisely what cellular lets it avoid. A public, carrier-run LoRaWAN network removes that burden, and a large lighting partner like Flashnet gives Netmore a ready-made product to sell on it.
What Cities Should Take From It
The pitch to municipalities starts with savings, and Flashnet says its system can cut street lighting energy costs by up to 35 percent and operating costs by up to 42 percent, figures that are vendor claims and depend heavily on what a city had before and how aggressively it dims its lights.
Savings are only part of the case, though: Flashnet also sells a wider city platform, inteliCITY, and a connected lamppost is a natural place to hang other sensors, from traffic counters to air quality monitors, because it already has power, height and a network link.
Both companies frame the deal around openness. “Having Flashnet join the Pulse Program is a strong signal of the smart lighting market continuing to move toward open, interoperable solutions that deliver measurable outcomes for municipalities and utilities,” said Frederik Oliver, Netmore’s vice president of growth.
Flashnet’s chief commercial officer, Alexandru Buzatu, said joining gives it “access to one of the world’s most extensive carrier-grade LoRaWAN networks.” For cities that is a real benefit, since a shared network can also carry water meters, parking sensors and air quality monitors without a separate build for each.
Convenience Or A New Kind Of Lock-In
For cities, the appeal is simple: a shared, professionally run network lets them connect lampposts, meters and sensors without building and maintaining their own gateways. Netmore gains a large lighting partner with a proven product, and Flashnet gains a network it can offer customers who want LoRaWAN without the infrastructure.
The trade-off sits on the other side: with Netmore now owning Actility and signing partners across utilities and cities, more municipal infrastructure could come to rely on a single private operator. Cities that sign up should insist on the open standards both companies talk about, so that the lampposts they connect this decade can move to another network in the next.
