How LPWAN Technologies are Accelerating IoT Adoption  (Part 1)

LPWAN technologies are transformative and have accelerated the IOT use cases that can be deployed now.

What is LPWAN?  A brief overview

The promise of IoT is often described by the “billions of things” connected. For first few years of the IoT market, a significant obstacle was the ability to connect sensors. Since then, we have made rapid progress in connecting everything from cows to environmental sensors. One technology responsible for this connectivity is LPWAN.

LPWANs, ( Low-Power Wide-Area Networks), are comprised of a set of connectivity technologies that connect relatively simple sensors in a cost-effective manner. The “low power” in LPWAN enables sensors to operate over significantly longer periods of time – up to 10 years. The “Wide Area” capability connects sensors with low base station density, allowing for significantly lower costs. Together, they offer a magic combination that unlocks the value of IoT, enabling use cases whose ROI would have been impractical prior to LPWA.

LPWA technologies emerged when cellular connectivity could not keep up with the demands of IoT, in use cases such as connecting environmental sensors in a farm, parking meters in a city or gas sensors in a refinery. These sensors, unlike mobile phones, have relatively simple tasks and tend to send small, often infrequent bursts of data.  Many of these sensors operate in remote, temporary or mobile locations, where power is delivered by battery.  Since they are usually unattended, longer battery life is critical to minimize deployment and maintenance costs. In comparison, cellular and WiFi technologies focus on bandwidth and typically require devices to be recharged every few days, if not more frequently.

Let’s break down the advantages of LPWAN over 4G and other cellular & connectivity technologies:

• Coverage – LPWAN technologies can cover vast areas with just a few base stations. For example, one LPWAN provider covered the entire Niger Delta in Africa with just four base stations.
• Unlicensed – LPWAN technologies use unlicensed frequencies. This has two key benefits, firstly, a company deploying LPWAN does not have to invest in owning or leasing spectrum. Secondly, it allows for self-organization. Ecosystems and go-to-markets can develop quickly, resulting in rapid competitive innovation. Further, LPWAN technologies are the most suitable for deployments likely to be in place for 10-15 years whereas the economics of licensed spectrum results in forced obsolescence (note 2G obsolescence).
• Cost of operation – With the focus on simplicity and low cost, cost of administration for LPWAN technologies is very low.
• Cost of the module –LPWAN modules are significantly cheaper WiFI or 4G modems and thus benefit the cost-effectiveness of deploying a radio per sensor, simplifying overall management costs
• Battery life – Since LPWAN technologies use very low power both in standby and communications mode, sensors don’t need maintenance for five and sometimes even ten years. This allows a “deploy and forget” model - at least for a few years - minimizing costs of monitoring and maintenance of the sensor itself.

How will LPWAN be used?

LPWAN technologies will primarily be deployed via two models:

1. Third-party providers – Customers interested in leveraging LPWAN technologies that don’t want responsibility for owning and deploying their own IoT technologies will leverage third-party operators for connectivity. SIGFOX, in particular, has rolled out a global IoT LPWAN network to address these opportunities while operators such as Orange are adding LPWAN services to their portfolio.
2. Private deployments – There are use cases that work well for private deployment, particularly for companies with distributed assets such as electric utilities and oil and gas pipeline operators. If a customer needs a large number of devices connected or if coverage spans a large area, building a private network may be cheaper then working with a network provider. Since the technology uses unlicensed spectrum, it saves investment to create the spectrum.

LPWAN technologies are transformative and have accelerated the IoT use cases that can be deployed. In the next blog, we will go deeper into the use cases that LPWAN addresses well and lay out a few scenarios on how this market might play out.

Stay tuned for Part 2!

Want to learn more?  Please join Momenta Partners for a webinar exploring LPWAN technologies, their use cases and the market opportunity with Ed Maguire and special guests: "Connecting the world at large: Exploring LPWAN technologies and opportunities."