(Telecompaper) Orange is pursuing its IoT strategy with the planned rollout of a LoRa network in major French cities, a development kit for for start-ups and industrial partners to prototype connected objects and LoRa services, and enriching its Datavenue platform for IoT and data projects. Announced in September, the planned LoRa network will be deployed gradually across France starting with 17 cities in the first quarter of 2016. In parallel, Orange and Ericsson will perform the first trial IoT using EC-GSM technology using 2G and LTE networks by the end of the year. Orange's IoT connectivity kit for LoRa can be used on networks the operator is currently trialling in Grenoble and on two sites in the Paris region. Originally open to start-ups, the Datavenue service platform now targets companies across all sectors. It has been enriched with new solutions and services and now features two complementary offerings, Live Objects for connected objects and Flexible Data for data analysis.