LoRaWAN No Longer Just for Early Adopters

Donna Moore, CEO and Chairwoman, LoRa Alliance

By Donna Moore, CEO and Chairwoman, LoRa Alliance

2022 was truly a transformative year for IoT, yielding major shifts in perception and execution, and surpassing milestones of massive deployments. At the LoRa Alliance, our experience was that people moved away from asking about “what” LoRaWAN is, to asking about “how” to deploy, how to find devices, how to partner, how to achieve ROI. IoT clearly has moved into a new stage of mass adoption.

The execution and results of LoRaWAN proof of concepts (PoCs) provide evidence of this market shift. Previously, deploying a PoC took an average of 12 to 18 months. Now, it averages about 6 months. Even better, the ROI on LoRaWAN projects is usually higher than what was originally estimated. Organizations that complete these PoCs quickly realize that the fastest way to compound value is to add new use cases and optimize their operations to benefit from the efficiencies that the solution is providing.

The tremendous headwinds over the past few years—Covid-19, climate change, flooding, fires, droughts, labor shortages, inflation, supply chain constraints—became tailwinds for LoRaWAN technology. In response to the world’s struggle to maintain systems and processes that support daily life, LoRaWAN was deployed to alleviate the problems. LoRaWAN is now used to monitor air and food quality; water quality and availability; infrastructure; and safety, security and health, and much more. While supporting people and the planet, LoRaWAN drives efficiencies that promote business growth and financial stability, making it the leading IoT connectivity solution.

So, what does 2023 hold? The fact is that the world continues to face a growing list of challenges. A major focus in 2023 will be improving infrastructure – buildings, utilities and cities need to find solutions to enhance and improve existing systems that are too expensive to replace outright. When business and governments plan their solutions, they will choose LPWAN IoT and there is huge opportunity for LoRaWAN because of the considerable ROI it generates.

Another growing trend in 2023 will be the requirement for device certification. We’ve already started to see more IoT tenders requiring the use of LoRaWAN certified devices–and it makes sense. Organizations and governments are investing for the long term and will not deploy untested devices at scale. They must have certainty that the end-devices and solutions that they are deploying can do the job they’re promising. The only way to achieve this is for devices to undergo established testing and certification. This requirement will continue to give LoRaWAN certified devices an advantage in the market because of the LoRa Alliance’s established, rigorous certification program.

2023 will be an exciting year. Although global issues will continue to pose challenges, they will also continue to drive LoRaWAN implementations that address these issues. There has never been a better time to develop and deploy solutions, using proven, certified and standards-based technologies like LoRaWAN to move our planet forward.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 4th, 2023 at 4:17 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.