Red Lion Controls announced on Tuesday that AT&T and Verizon 4G LTE certified its Sixnet IndustrialPro 6000 and RAM 6000 industrial cellular router series to be compatible with their respective networks.
The York, PA-based company develops industrial automation and control products for manufacturers, including human-machine interface panels, panel meters, industrial Ethernet and cellular networking and process control.
Red Lion is owned by U.K.-based Spectris, which develops instrumentation and controls.
Obtaining successful certification by telecom industry giants like AT&T and Verizon is important for Red Lion's latest routers to gain acceptance in the marketplace. In December 2012, Red Lion announced that the routers had been certified compatible with the Bell Mobility 4G LTE network.
They seek 4G LTE certification later this year from Sprint and Canadian telecom companies, Rogers and Telus.
The ability to make the leap to 4G LTE can result in huge performance improvement and the ability to perform remote automation, setup remote offices and improved video surveillance. Data rates can be up to 100 times faster than 2G and 3G systems.
The routers can work in environments where hazardous chemicals and lack of space all but eliminate wired solutions as possibilities. The Sixnet IndustrialPro 6000 router can operate in temperatures ranging from -40 to 75 degrees Celsius, and 5 to 95 percent humidity (non-condensing); the RAM 6000 has an operating temperature of -40 to 85 degrees Celsius and the same humidity range as the IndustrialPro 6000.
Both routers were developed by Ballston Lake, NY-based Sixnet, which was acquired by Spectris in October 2011 and made a part of Red Lion.
Sixnet develops a variety of M2M solutions for the petroleum, banking, maritime, mining, military and retail industries. The acquisition was an important move as it expanded Red Lion’s offerings of automated products.
With high-speed technology like 4G LTE moving full steam ahead in the consumer market, it did not take long for it to reach industrial markets. Red Lion’s routers open up a lot of possibilities for companies that had to deal with environments that were not suitable for wired networking, but could not previously function in a wireless configuration because the speeds were too slow.
Edited by
Braden Becker