The LoRa Alliance®, the global association of companies backing the open LoRaWAN® standard for the Internet of Things (IoT) low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs), provided an update on recent milestones and industry engagements that position LoRaWAN as the only LPWAN technology able to meet the needs required for scaling massive IoT.
Donna Moore, CEO and Chairwoman of the LoRa Alliance, said that without question, 2021 is the year of scale. The LoRa Alliance and their members have laid the groundwork – a large member ecosystem that brings industry-leading technical and market expertise to their activities, a strong certification program, global roaming availability, industry-leading end-to-end security, and easy to develop and deploy. Due to these achievements, they are exceeding their targets for mass global scaling.
Recent goals achieved by the LoRa Alliance:
- LoRaWAN has the greatest number of certified LPWAN sensors on the market, with a 34% increase in certified devices in the past year
- Release of the LoRaWAN link layer 1.0.4 makes development, deployments, and certification faster and easier
- New Regional Parameters document significantly increases network capacity with Long Range-Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (LR-FHSS)
- LoRaWAN now supports zero-touch device identification QR codes for automated onboarding
- Growth of LoRaWAN public networks to over 160 countries
- Expanding global authorization for LoRaWAN use, most recently in Italy and Israel
- Advancement of LoRaWAN device roaming now in more than 25 countries, including satellite connectivity, which seamlessly interconnects Private and Public networks
- Largest growth of multi-RAN deployments with technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, DLMS/COSEM and RFID
- LoRa Alliance membership growth with 40 new members joining in the past 3 months
- LoRaWAN deployments offer the greatest number of market-ready end-to-end solutions with companies actively investing in infrastructure to accelerate LoRaWAN growth
- Evolution of LoRaWAN security by the Security Working Group, led by well-renowned security expert Christophe Buffard of Kudelski
- Hiring of leading certification and standards expert Michael J. Kirwan as Vice President of Certification and Standards Development
“Since our inception, the Committees and Working Groups have been led by the brightest minds in their respective fields, ensuring that the LoRaWAN standard is backed by tremendous engineering and marketing talent in key roles,” said Moore.
Buffard and Kirwan join a strong leadership team driving LoRa Alliance activity, including:
- Technical Committee: Chair Alper Yegin, Actility and Vice Chair Olivier Seller, Semtech
- Certification Committee: Chair Michael Kirwan
- Marketing Committee: Vice Chair Amanda Lowe, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Regional Vice-Chairs:
- o Rémi Lorrain, Semtech, EMEA
- o Xiaobo Yu, Alibaba, Asia Pacific
- o Karthik Ranjan, Semtech, North America
Collaborations
Collaboration is the only way to drive IoT and meet the needs of this massive market opportunity. The LoRa Alliance’s vast ecosystem facilitates collaborations to simplify and accelerate deployments for end-to-end market solutions. Major projects and collaborations are announced daily, some of which include:
- AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN powers CrisisGo’s Safety OneClick, an easy-to-use physical wireless panic button system, helps schools meet safety mandates like Alyssa's Law, extend safety plans to any location, and get help at the click of a button.
- MachineQ, a Comcast Company, in partnership with CoreKinect, designed and implemented an inventory management solution for a single customer with over 325,000 LoRaWAN devices at more than 80 locations across U.S. and Canada.
- Actility deploys a large-scale LoRaWAN network for smart grids with Powerco in order to improve the monitoring of New Zealand’s second largest electricity distribution network, covering over 28,000 kilometers of overhead lines and underground cables.
- MultiTech outdoor gateways and Aloxy partner to increase worker safety and improve industrial plant efficiency using value positioning monitoring.
- Milesight performs robust LoRaWAN network deployment of low temperature monitoring for Covid-19 vaccine storage in pharmacies and hospitals to maintain vaccine efficacy to be compliant with the national requirements from governmental Health Care Facilities of Indonesia.
- Minol Zenner Group member, Minol ZENNER Connect, reached a new milestone surpassing 2.3 Million connected devices and 20,000+ LoRaWAN gateways deployed. Already one of the largest LoRaWAN networks in Germany, the provider continues to serve energy suppliers, cities and the housing industry.
- Chevron, Oil & Gas Supermajor operates a large oil field in San Joaquin Valley, (CA) where it deployed 30 MultiTech gateways and 3,000 devices to support a variety of use cases in their daily operations. The energy firm recovered its investment and had a 100% return within the first year.
- Kerlink & AIUT have installed the largest smart LoRaWAN network in Poland for water-supply-system monitoring and management with their Kerlink Wirnet iStation gateways.
- Everynet BV has recently partnered with Actility to provide seamless network integration between Everynet’s carrier-grade national networks and Actility’s IoT platforms around the world. The collaboration aims at broadening accessibility to LoRaWAN® coverage for current and future clients of both companies.
- Abeeway, Actility’s subsidiary, deploys over 60,000 tracking devices for Smart Construction: over 20,000 trackers for Bouygues Construction Matériel in France and Switzerland, and roughly 40,000 devices for Red Sea Giga Project, world’s most ambitious regenerative tourism project in Saudi Arabia.
- NNNCo is bringing enterprise-grade connectivity across the state of Tasmania, Australia, to bring IoT solutions and opportunities to cities, farms, and enterprises so they can deploy their own IoT solutions.
- Netze BW has launched the largest outdoor LoRaWAN deployment in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany’s third largest state. Working with Kerlink, and ZENNER IoT Solutions, the deployment includes up to 3,000 Kerlink Wirnet LoRaWAN gateways.
- TEKTELIC and Talkpool are collaborating on the deployment of scalable, LoRaWAN® connected Smart Building solutions aimed at providing superior Air Quality Monitoring and HVAC Optimization.
- Senet raises $16M to accelerate the operation of carrier-grade LoRaWAN networks across the United States, supporting the design and deployment of water and gas metering projects representing millions of households, and millions of daily transactions for multi-location enterprise and industrial customers.
- SenRa deploys LoRaWAN network for India’s largest smart water metering project in Pimpri-Chinchwad Smart City connecting 10,000 AMI water meters and plans for global expansion to include the Middle East, Asia, Africa.
- The United Kingdom is going to receive nationwide LoRaWAN networks and infrastructure for the first time after connectivity provider Connexin raised £80 million in funding.
Click here to learn more about the LoRa Alliance.
