LPWA Will Be a $56 Billion IoT Market by 2022, Says ON World

Demand for LPWA solutions is accelerating as competition intensifies among IoT network operators, network infrastructure vendors and service providers, according to a recently published report by global IoT research firm ON World.

ON World’s analysis of nearly 100 LPWA network operators found that unlicensed networks such as Sigfox and LoRa® make up two-thirds today. Unlicensed networks have grown rapidly over the past few years with simple star networks, ease of installation and free spectrum. LoRa provides the added benefit of installation flexibility and adaptability where customer’s need private networks.

Sigfox and LoRa networks cover much of Europe and many parts of Asia Pacific with IoT services offered by telecom operators such as Arqiva, Bouygues, Orange, KPN, Proximus, Swisscom as well as a growing number of IoT independent operators such as Senet, Thinxtra and UnaBiz.

Licensed LPWA Networks

Licensed LPWA networks such as LTE-M and NB-IoT are growing even faster than unlicensed networks and make up nearly 1 in 3 of the LPWA operators we evaluated. NB-IoT network operator activity has accelerated over the past year and will grow 1800% this year. Licensed IoT network operators are offering ultra-low connectivity plans such as Deutsche Telekom’s €10 (~$12) for 10 years and 500 MB.

Mobile operators such as Deutsche Telekom, China Telecom and Vodafone are aggressively rolling out their licensed NB-IoT networks in Europe, China and Australia. In the U.S., all major operators including AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile have fast-tracked their licensed IoT networks and most of these are providing both LTE-M and NB-IoT services. By the end of 2018, most of the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific will be covered with licensed IoT networks.

ON World has identified 40+ unique LPWA applications