Does LPWAN in IoT have a clear direction?
LPWAN in IoT
Origin post in November 2015. Now we are 12 months later and nothing has changed.
“Just follow the signs”. We heard that all roads lead to Rome. In LPWAN, unfortunately, the roads lead in different directions: one path leads to Sigfox; The next way leads to LoRa and further divides into LoRaWAN and other directions; another path leads to LTE-Cat-M1 with a junction to LTE-Cat-NB1; yet another way leads to Weightless where the road forks to Weightless-N, Weightless-P and Weightless-W.
It is not so easy to take the right path. With the press release of Huawei and Deutsche Telekom in summer 2015 the LPWAN map comes even more confusing:
Deutsche Telekom and Huawei fudge truth, claim first 3GPP NB-IoT demo:
Having forced the different proponents to work together in the NB-IoT working group, the 3GPP’s attempt at uniting the cellular-led LPWAN alternative to the likes of Sigfox and LoRa is beginning to bear (politically-charged) fruit. Huawei and Deutsche Telekom have announced the first installation of the NB-IoT (narrowband IoT) technology on a commercial European network – and they aren’t being completely honest.
Which path will you choose? What way should you recommend to your clients? Will you recommend SigFox, LoRa, Weightless, or the new direction signalled by the NB-IoT Working Group LTE-Cat-NB1, LTE-Cat-M1?
Currently neither Sigfox, LTE-Cat-NB1 or LTE-Cat-M1 or can deliver radio modules plus base stations for a private network. So if you want to cover a city or a larger region with a private network then your path ends at LoRa or Weightless P for now . If you are interested in a private LPWAN, then I’ll show you the best way and make you a commercial proposal.
And if you are interested in other “old” common radio technologies like 2G, 3G, 4G, BT Wi-Fi have then I am looking forward to your inquiry to harald.naumann (at) gsm-modem.de because I can offer you a solution for these as well.
Hi Harald,
Very interesting article. LoRa looks promising indeed.
I would like to have a quick call with you if you’re available this week?
Thanks
Shane
Smartcom
Hi Shane, all the LPWAN articles are financed out of my pocket. Consulting I can not offer free of charge. Please be so kind and drop me an email to harald.naumann(at)gsm-modem.de . I will help you for a time slot for a 30 minutes communication.
Do not forget about WAVIoT having out-of-the-box solution with plug-n-play devices for IoT, gateways and web-based platform for network management, control panel and client dashboards for each solutions.