The Netherlands, South Korea Have Rolled Out Nationwide IoT Coverage – Who's Next?
By Ed Biller
Competing companies and technologies are striving for dominance in the global IoT market.
This summer has been an eventful one for connected devices. On June 30, Dutch telecommunications company KPN switched on its nationwide Internet of Things (IoT) network. Then, less than a week later on July 4, South Korea’s SK Telecom reported that it, too, had completed its nationwide network.
In The Netherlands, KPN fitted existing mobile transmission towers with LoRa (Long Range) gateways and antennas, switching the first parts of the network online in November, and then scrambling over the next eight months to meet customer demand to complete the system. More than 1.5 million devices already are connected to the KPN network — a number that is expected to grow rapidly. Its first IoT applications already are connected, proofs of concept are being tested, and KPN is working to enable localization functionality as soon as possible.
SK Telecom, too, rapidly developed its nationwide LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network), activating it six months ahead of schedule. And, while KPN has leveraged IoT applications toward airport baggage handling, port depth sounding, and rail switching, SK Telecom is focusing on a two-way communication system that will enable utility services to be handled without home visits (due to smart meters in customers' homes), and a smart watch that lets caretakers or parents keep track of their wards.
South Korea’s LoRaWAN operates in the 900 MHz (ISM) frequency band and uses a listen-before-talk (LBT) function to avoid network congestion. This LoRaWAN is just one of a number of platforms taking advantage of LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) technology, which transmits small amounts of data at < 5 Kbps.
This type of IoT network is finding footing across the world. France’s SIGFOX has deployed, or is in the process of deploying, LPWAN networks in 14 different countries, including Germany, France, Spain, the UK, and Italy, with plans to set up shop in the Middle East and Africa. Singapore, the company’s first Asian nation deployment, is set to offer nationwide coverage by 2017. China Telecom will use the 800 MHz band to enable nationwide narrow-band IoT (NB-IoT) coverage by this time next year. NB-IoT leverages the existing infrastructure of LTE and GSM network providers.
However, North America remains a prime target — per analyst firm IDC, the market will generate $1.9 trillion in Internet of things revenue by 2020.
SIGFOX said in May that it would expand to at least 100 U.S. cities this year, operating over the sub-GHz frequency bands (900 MHz in the U.S. and 868 MHz in Europe). Senet, too, has set up its LoRa network in 100 U.S. cities, with plans for 100 more by year’s end. Furthermore, SK Telecom partner Samsung has pledged to spend $1.2 billion on U.S.-based IoT R&D and investments over the next four years, and it has formed a lobby group with Intel to influence U.S. policy.
Link Labs, Actility, and NWave are just a few of the other players in the space, and each faces universal challenges beyond LPWAN network competitors. Uncertain revenues — the money doesn’t start rolling in until the network is complete and individuals/services begin paying for its use — combined with competition from a pending 5G rollout and alternative technologies, such as random phase multiple access (RPMA, a low-power, wide-area channel access method utilizing the 2.4 GHz band), make it difficult to predict who will emerge atop the IoT mountain.
Not that SIGFOX’s president of North America, Allen Proithis, is concerned.
“I think there's some great spectrum efficiencies, some peer-to-peer stuff, some of the things they're doing with 5G that will be very valuable. But to say that one thing is going to provide a premium service and at the same time provide the lowest-battery service, it's like saying Nordstrom is going to start opening dollar stores,” Proithis told Network World.
“You sort of have to say 'which one do you want to be?' No one person or company can be all things to all people.”