Let me preface this piece by offering that, anyone in the know at the LoRa Alliance should feel free to give me their corrective information.
To the best of my knowledge there are about 350 million LoRaWAN nodes deployed today with almost seven million gateways deployed last year. After those data points, this article is more like an editorial because it’s based on my opinion more than fact.
This article is about the state of LoRaWAN and the differences between Europe’s (and perhaps the rest of the world) vs. the United States. In general, my perspective is that the deployments in Europe have been facilitated as part of a public offering while in the U.S. (no offense to the efforts of Senet and Everynet, now part of Netmore Group) private networks dominate U.S. deployments. Here is my conjecture as to why.
It has more to do with the business models than the spectrum. While the EU primarily uses 868 MHz vs. the U.S. using 902-928 MHz, they don’t have a significant difference in range and their “dwell time” restrictions are a bit different. The primary difference is that the service providers in EU embraced LoRaWAN deployment, while U.S. MNOs provided for private applications.
In general, some applications are common worldwide, including:
- Smart Metering, where utilities use LoRaWAN for remote monitoring of water, gas, and electricity meters.
- Smart Agriculture, where sensors monitor soil moisture, temperature, and other environmental factors.
- Asset Tracking, where location and status of valuable assets are tracked.
- Smart Cities applications, like smart lighting, waste management, and environmental monitoring.
- Environmental Monitoring, where sensors are used to monitor air quality, and water quality.
Those timing restrictions then cause some differences. For example, in the EU, stricter duty cycle limitations and prioritizing infrequent data transmissions – so Smart Building and Smart City where sustainability is a national goal – drive deployment. In the U.S., fewer duty cycle constraints, applications with more frequent data transmissions, may be more feasible so large-scale deployments in agriculture, asset tracking and industrial IoT (IIoT) benefit from the wide coverage of LoRaWAN. A lot of this is geographic in nature, as the U.S. often has large land development associated with warehouses, farms, and industrial plants, where the EU is far more efficient in using space.
Now comes the question that was bugging me to author this article. How much traffic is on public networks as opposed to private networks? Given the geographic layout I mentioned, my assumption is that most of the U.S. is private, while in the rest of the world it is public.
However, nowhere can I find quantitative information to support my conjecture. This is understandable given the nature of LoRaWAN technology.
First, it’s even more “cheap and cheerful” than massive IoT devices and the interoperability of LoRaWAN makes it like Wi-Fi. When you deploy a device, you get to see the possibility of which gateways are available to ride on.
Second, the definition of public and private is, at best, loosely applied. For example. At an airport, is the network being deployed by the airport authority itself for the benefit of the services it provides to airlines, or is it by a single airline or delivery company, such as DHL or FedEx? If both these types of networks exist, does a hybrid solution get counted twice? Do we base the definition of public based on whether it is a subscription service, such as what Orange and Objenious have deployed nationwide? How should I count a private network like what Verizon has deployed with dedicated infrastructure that is a self-managed network, but has tier 2+ support?
The point of all this paralysis of analysis is that something is seriously lacking in the acceptance and adoption of LoRaWAN in the U.S. Market education and the availability or awareness of integrators and service providers need a boost.
So let me offer a megaphone, we will gladly accept guest articles and interviews with the industry to move the needle.
Edited by
Erik Linask
