Mobile companies establish new IoT initiative
The GMSA industry association for cellular operators has announced a new IoT strategy, which will utilise low-powered wide area networks (LPWAN). The new project is backed by its 26 members and will work to accelerate the commercial availability of mobile IoT technology.&nbsp;
The GSMA rightly does not believe that a single technology is capable of addressing all of the LPWAN use cases and so the initiative will focus on three proposed complementary licensed 3GPP standards – LTE Evolutions, GSM evolutions and Clean Slate technologies. But the important word here is “licensed”. The GSMA is looking at LPWAN for licensed spectrum, whereas the majority of LPWAN deployments and work today is in unlicensed spectrum.

Over the past couple of years, the development and acceptance of LPWAN technologies has taken off. According to forecasts from Machina Research, there will be over 3 billion LPWAN IoT connections by 2023, outstripping those on cellular technologies. The three leading lights in this emerging market (and there are many other players) are the LoRa Alliance, backed by Semtech; France-based Sigfox with its Sigfox Network Operator strategy (in July, Luxembourg became the eighth country to announce a nationwide Sigfox IoT network); and the UK’s Neul with its Weightless solution, which is now owned by Huawei. Earlier this year, Vodafone announced that it will become the first operator to introduce Huawei’s Cellular IoT (CIoT) LPWAN technology, and both companies intend that the technology will be published as an open industry standard by 3GPP.

LPWAN is characterised by its use of low power for devices (often running for years on AA-sized batteries), extremely low bandwidth, low cost of connectivity (just $1 to $2 added to device costs – compare that to $10 for GSM/GPRS and $50 for LTE), and wide area coverage. As such, it is ideal for mass deployments and remote locations, where an operator doesn’t want the hassle and expense of servicing the devices on a regular basis – just drop and go.

“Traditional cellular technologies have been bumped to number two spot,” said Jim Morrish, Chief Research Officer at Machina Research, “although the overall effect of the emergence of LPWA technologies is expected to add wide area connections, rather than to substitute for cellular connections.”

This all fits nicely into the emerging IoT Platform sector, with dedicated IoT providers working alongside cellular operators to support their mutual customers, through a single bill and network management interface. True, telcos can and do develop their own platform play, but we are seeing far more collaboration at the moment. The IoT Platform as a Service model is looking strong. When the GSMA says that “mobile operators already provide reliable end-to-end IoT platforms that allow customers to scale and manage their business requirements”, this is usually via specialist third-party companies – a situation that is proving mutually beneficial for now.