Optus Enterprise-assembled platform includes Thinxtra battery-powered sensors.
CouriersPlease intends to attach IoT sensors to its fleet of 3500 transportation cages to prevent them being lost or left unattended at commercial sites.
The Australian company has 850 franchises and 350 delivery partners across Australia, and uses transportation cages that can carry between 60 and 600 parcels.
Delivery companies use transportation cages to safely pack, store and move parcels throughout their logistics networks.
CouriersPlease said it has seen substantial growth in parcel volumes in the past two years, meaning more assets are needed for transportation.
Chief operating officer Phil Reid said that transportation cages "were disappearing due to theft, or simply left sitting in our commercial customers’ facilities, unidentified for return."
“We have doubled our assets, and that introduces increased risk," Reid said.
"As our business continues to expand, it has become crucial we can track [the cages] whereabouts in real time.
"This will nullify losses of the expensive cages, which cost $1000 per unit, while allowing us to keep pace with higher volumes of deliveries."
Optus Enterprise assembled the IoT platform that CouriersPlease will use, which includes Thinxtra battery-powered IoT sensors that will be attached to the cages and that communicate over Thinxtra's low-power wide area network (LP-WAN).
The devices will send location information from each transport cage to a dashboard visible to CouriersPlease and are expected to have a battery life of more than five years.
By affixing the devices to the cages, CouriersPlease will gain real-time data for greater visibility over its transportation cage fleet.
CouriersPlease started deploying devices in October in preparations for the Christmas parcel rush.
CouriersPlease is planning to extend its use of the Optus solution to track other parts of the business in the future and to help support its growth.
Reid said the company is “keen to get to the point where we can track individual, high-value parcels and know where they are at any time”.