The competitive landscape in the Internet of Things (IoT) will be reshuffled due to the rise of low-power wide area (LPWA), and telecom operators, equipment manufacturers and chip makers are gearing up to fight.
For example, several telecom service providers, including Orange (formerly France Telecom), are preparing to launch the LoRa specification Internet of Things using the unlicensed 800-900MHz band; many other telecom operators are expected to develop with the new 3GPP next year. The emerging narrow-band cellular standard based on LTE is used to build the Internet of Things.
At the same time, the pioneer of LPWA, Sigfox, is preparing to launch its own 800-900MHz service globally; there are several other players, such as Ingenu, who are also trying to deploy similar networks or license technology to other industries. Cisco Systems has joined the LoRa camp to provide gateways for this specification; LoRa and Sigfox are attracting chipmakers such as Microchip, ST and TI.
Karri Kuoppanaki, vice president of network technology and strategy for telecom operator TMobile, said that the performance characteristics of the existing ISM band and emerging cellular technology: "It seems to be roughly in the same arena, and usually the standardized solution will win;" The company has Internet of Things customers using the existing GSM network, but has not yet decided what technology to adopt in the future.
“Different operators have different business models and needs. If they deploy technologies like Sigfox, how to proceed to 3GPP services remains to be seen;†Kuoppanaki said that narrow-band LTE solutions will be easier and existing. The cellular network is integrated, not the new radio technology from third-party operators, and the former will have an economic scale with global demand.
But Jameson Buffmire, Orange's San Francisco office business analyst, said that the narrow-band LTE standard is hard to reach the cost of less than $5 for unlicensed band replacement technology, nor will it be the best way to leverage valuable licensed spectrum; he pointed out that because of Sigfox With scale and rapid deployment, the market is becoming more and more interested in the LPWA network: “Operators have learned that not everything can be hard-pressed into a data plan of more than $10 a month.â€
Buffmire pointed out that because operators are focusing on the average revenue per user, narrow-band LTE may cause the industry to kill each other; and he does not think that the honeycomb industry can be prepared in five years. Wide area Internet of Things applications. Orange evaluated more than six LPWA networks before choosing LoRa; the company plans to build a nationwide network in France, and has so far deployed the network and gateways in 17 cities, including San Francisco. .
“LoRa is adaptive (self adapTIng). We don’t have to do a field survey because the gateway can adapt to the distance...the cost is less than one tenth of the cost of the cellular network deployment, so it is enough to cover the entire country. Buffmire said: "We will first deploy a national network in France and seek other opportunities later;" He pointed out that one of the first applications of the LoRa network was the sensor of the swimming pool, which was responsible for detecting chlorine. Standards such as concentration, and cellular networks are not suitable for such applications.
Sigfox: IoT needs a new operator
Luke D'Arcy, US marketing director for SigFox, who works closely with chipmakers, says the IoT needs an operator with a focus on its unique application technology; he points out that the competition for existing cellular operators is It allows the iPhone to download video as fast as possible, while Sigfox is probably the slowest network in the world, but the goal is to target low-cost IoT nodes that don't care about bandwidth and send up to ten SMS-like messages a day.
The SigFox network currently covers 10 US cities, as well as most cities in France and Spain, as well as other European countries. D'Arcy points out that Sigfox is an ideal solution for farmland water monitoring and forest fire monitoring. A place where the cellular network is unreasonable.
"We focus on low-end applications," he said. Narrowband LTE itself needs 60 to 100 Kbits/second to support firmware update: "I'm sure that once the technology is normalized, its data transfer rate needs It will be much higher than Sigfox.†He also pointed out that Sigfox is particularly suitable for the noisy US 900MHz band by changing the filtering at the base station.
In addition, Sigfox uses ultra-narrowband transceivers and broadband receivers that are more competitive than competing spread-spectrum methods, providing better capacity for the booming IoT: "We listen to each channel at 100Hz in the 100Hz range, so at the same time Can listen to thousands of messages."
D'Arcy pointed out that At Semiconductor and Microchip's Atmel currently offer Sigfox reference designs with integrated transceivers and microcontrollers; TI and Silicon Labs will launch Bluetooth, Zigbee and Sigfox later this year. Integrated chip sample with Thread.
In order to grab the IoT business opportunities, Cisco Systems joined the LoRa camp and worked with a service provider from Dubai to develop a base station to support the technology; Felix Davis, product line manager of the company, said LoRa was chosen because of the technology. There are already actual users, ecosystems, and openness, and their promising applications include networked smart meters, parking lots, and even trash cans.
And Davis believes that in the end, there will be no communication technology covering all IoT usage scenarios. IoT applications will be a mix of various network technologies such as LoRa, Wi-Fi, cellular, DRSC, etc. It will weigh in terms of bandwidth, latency, cost, and coverage.
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