Competition in the field of Internet of things (IoT) due to low power wan (low power, wide area, LPWA) and reshuffle, the rise of the telecommunication companies, various equipment manufacturers and chip companies are rubbing their hands to play.

Including, for example, Orange (former France Telecom), several Telecom service providers, is preparing to launch the use of unlicensed 800 ~ 900 MHZ band LoRa specifications of things; Many other telecommunication companies are expected in the next year with the new development, by 3 GPP LTE based emerging narrowband cellular standards are the Internet of things.

At the same time, the pioneer in the field of LPWA Sigfox is prepared in the global launch its own 800 ~ 900 MHZ service; There are several other companies such as Ingenu, trying to deploy a similar network or will are technology to other companies. And Cisco Systems have been added to LoRa camp, as the specification provides the gateway; LoRa and Sigfox draws from chip makers such as Microchip, ST and TI, etc.

Telecom operators TMobile network technology and strategy, vice President of Karri Kuoppanaki said the existing ISM frequency band and the performance characteristics of emerging cellular technology: "seems to be roughly in the same arena, and generally standardized solution will win out;" The company has a iot customers to use the existing GSM network, but haven't decided what technology is adopted in the future.

"Different carriers have different business model and the demand, if they are deployed technology such as Sigfox, how to progress to the 3 GPP services remains to be seen;" Kuoppanaki said the scheme would more easily with the existing narrowband LTE cellular network integration, rather than from third party providers a new line of electric technology, and the former will have both the economic scale of global demand.

But Orange's San Francisco office business analyst Jameson Buffmire said narrowband LTE standard of alternative technologies to meet the unauthorized frequency under $5 chip cost, also won't be the best use of valuable authorized spectrum method; , he points out, because the Sigfox have scale, rapid deployment, market interest in the LPWA network is more and more strong: "operators realize that not all things can be shoehorned into the data in more than $10 a month."

And Buffmire points out, because operators are focusing on to high average revenue per user (average revenue per user), narrowband LTE could lead to industry kill each other; And he did not think of cellular industry can be ready to respond to the wide-area iot application within five years. Orange before choosing LoRa assessment for more than six kinds of LPWA network; The company plans in France are a national network, has so far in 17 cities including San Francisco, deployment of the network and gateway.

"LoRa is adaptive (self adapting), we don't have to do a field investigation, because the gateway can adapt to the distance... its costs less than one over ten of the cellular network deployment, therefore enough to cover the entire country;" Buffmire said: "we will be the first to deploy in France national network, and to seek other opportunities later;" , he points out, LoRa sensor network is one of the first application of swimming pool, is responsible for the detection of chlorine concentration degrees such as standard, and cellular network is not very suitable for this application.

Sigfox: Internet of things need new operators

Work closely with chip manufacturers SigFox America's marketing director, said Luke D 'Arcy, Internet of things need to be a kind of operator, with focus on its unique application technology; He pointed out that the existing cellular network operators compete are all depends on who makes the iPhone the fastest download video, but Sigfox is probably the world's most slow network, but the locked target is the requirement of low cost and don't care about the bandwidth low-order iot node, a day at most similar SMS text messages sent ten times.

SigFox network now covers the 10 U.S. cities, as well as in most cities in France, Spain, and other European countries; Sigfox D 'Arcy points out, is the ideal of irrigation and water conservancy monitoring, forest fire monitoring, can be applied to the deployed cellular network is not reasonable.

"We focused on the low order application," he said, the narrowband LTE itself to support the firmware update feature, you need a minimum of 60 ~ 100 Kbits/second speed: "I am sure that once the technology into the standardization, the data transmission rate demand will be much higher than Sigfox." He also pointed out that, through the base station to change filter wave, Sigfox is especially suitable for noisy American 900 MHZ band.

Sigfox, moreover, USES the ultra narrow frequency transceiver, can also spread spectrum methods of broadband receiver than competition, as the booming of Internet provide a better capacity: "we listen to each channel is 100 hz 200 KHZ range, so can listen to thousands of information at the same time."

D 'Arcy, points out that at present On Semiconductor and Microchip's Atmel offer to integrated transceiver with micro-controller Sigfox reference design; TI with Silicon Labs, such as the manufacturer, will be launched later this year to support bluetooth, Zigbee, Sigfox integrated chip samples with Thread.

What kind of operator need age of the Internet of things?

Cisco in silicon valley LoRa Alliance conference show iot base stations

For those things networking opportunities, Cisco Systems, joined the LoRa camp, and with a service from Dubai (Dubai) jointly development support base stations of the technology; The company product line manager, Felix, Davis said LoRa was chosen because it is have real user technology, ecosystem, and its openness, and they look good applications include networking smart meters, parking lot, or even a trash can.

And Davis argues that in the end not only a kind of communication technology covers all Internet use situation, Internet of things will be all kinds of network technology such as LoRa, wi-fi, honeycomb, DRSC... Such as mixing, all technologies in bandwidth, delay, weigh the costs and coverage, etc.