2021 was LoRaWAN’s strongest year ever in terms of global adoption, deployments and expanded roaming; formally recognized as a standard by ITU-T.
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), today announced significant market traction across France and Spain, which positions LoRaWAN as the preferred LPWAN technology in the region.
LoRaWAN is already recognized as the global choice for LPWAN, with more than 225 million LoRa/LoRaWAN end nodes and growing, and LoRaWAN networks available worldwide.
In France, more than 3.5 million assets are already connected using LoRa/LoRaWAN, with over 1.5M additional LoRaWAN devices in deployment and multiple countrywide networks. In Spain, there are already 500,000 devices deployed using LoRaWAN, and adoption is increasing rapidly, with more than 200,000 to be deployed in 2022, with nationwide network rollouts actively underway. For example, the Spanish government has set the ambitious goal of deploying 13.5 million smart water meters by 2025 – an estimated 1.35 billion Euro investment. LoRa Alliance member Everynet has joined forces with American Tower de Espana, the largest independent towerco in the country with more than 11,000 tower sites, to deploy a national LoRaWAN network in support of the governments’ goal. Given these projects in Spain, a consensus of industry analysts forecast that LoRaWAN will reach 2 million connections over the next few years.
“LoRaWAN has experienced strong growth in France and Spain based on its excellent track record of supporting a range of IoT applications that deliver a strong ROI to businesses,” said Donna Moore, CEO and chairwoman of the LoRa Alliance.
“With heightened global demand for IoT using LPWAN technologies, LoRaWAN is trusted. Combining this with broad network availability, considerable cost savings compared to NB-IoT and the ability to roam globally, LoRaWAN is the leading choice for LPWAN across multiple end markets.”
“2021 marked a turning point for LoRaWAN, as hundreds of companies in multiple sectors deployed large-scale LoRaWAN solutions that connected millions of objects to the internet,” she continued. “LoRa Alliance membership is active and growing in Europe broadly and France and Spain specifically, which is driving multiple large-scale deployments by some of the region’s leading companies, including Actility, Arson Metering, Cellnex, Engie, Everynet, Michelin, Orange, Parki, and Renault.”
LoRaWAN is the only LPWAN scaling with mass deployments and global roaming availability, which is backed by a broad, global ecosystem. Its growth was driven in large part by the acceleration of digital transformation, which moved from nice-to-have to a necessity among enterprises and cities globally, spurred on by the lessons learned from COVID-19. In short, digitization has become critical to providing better and more services to people to ensure safe environments.
There are many key enablers of LoRaWAN’s mass adoption:
- Recognized as an international open standard by independent SDO ITU-T
- Exponential growth in network coverage, which became worldwide in 2021
- Global roaming with flexible network models, which offer public, private, hybrid and community network options, ensuring long-term viability to serve the needs of a diverse and growing market
- Significant growth in deployments of scale driving digital transformation and delivering ROI
- Large and diverse membership ensures availability of products from multiple suppliers, ensuring complete freedom of choice for customers
- The maturity of the LoRaWAN ecosystem is proven in several verticals
“The LoRaWAN market has been following the classic ‘hype cycle.’ We are now entering the steady growth phase, with 100% year-on-year growth for connected devices,” said Olivier Hersent, CEO and CTO at Actility. “We are seeing the expected consolidation of the smaller players, as customers are no longer early adopters but mature industries, including Bouygues Construction, Schneider Electric, SNCF, Total, Veolia/Birdz and Volvo. LoRaWAN has become a ‘must have’ capability complementing leading IoT platforms to inject massive sensing data with minimum infrastructure and deployment overheads. The Actility ThingPark platform has made this seamless, and Actility ThingPark Exchange interconnects an increasing number of public and private LoRaWAN networks, with 60% YoY growth for deployed LoRaWAN network gateways.”
“This is the ideal time for the mass adoption of LoRaWAN technology, particularly as utilities and cities around the world look to become more connected and improve sustainability,” stated Everynet CEO Lawrence Latham. “LoRaWAN offers a far lower total cost of ownership and is highly secure. And it helps enterprises reduce their carbon footprint, which is something we all need to be focused on.”
An article from Journal du Net cited a recent BearingPoint report, which noted that in France, LoRa/LoRaWAN is chosen for 64% of new IoT projects, far ahead of cellular (29%) and Sigfox (25%). The LoRa Alliance expects that gap to widen because LoRaWAN offers the opportunity to support customers with multimode solutions for end devices, enabling the same device to use LoRaWAN, Sigfox or other connectivity. Murata, AcSip and Nemeus, for example, offer modules that support both Sigfox and LoRaWAN. Further supporting this approach, many public operators can support multi-RAN deployments providing multiple connectivity options to end users. Multimode approaches give users choice for the long haul and a pathway to enable even more IoT use cases because of the dual technology possibilities. They also assure long-term ROI and viability of technology choices without the need to modify or replace existing systems.
LoRaWAN World Expo Coming to Paris
The LoRa Alliance will host the LoRaWAN World Expo at the Palais des Congrès July 6-7. The program will have a key focus on the French and Spanish markets, featuring Mariya Gabriel, European commissioner for innovation, research, culture, education and youth; Laure de la Raudière, president of France’s Electronic Communications, Postal and Print Media Distribution Regulatory Authority Arcep; Daniel Mes, Member of the Cabinet of Executive Vice-President on the European Green Deal; and Juan Ramon Arraibi, COO of Nortegas. The Expo will provide visitors access to the full LoRaWAN ecosystem, the opportunity to network with leading experts and businesses using LoRaWAN to understand how they are achieving strong ROIs. Attendees will gain an understanding of how to accelerate their LoRaWAN activities across any vertical or geographic region to grow their business. Finally, visitors will experience the impact of LoRaWAN firsthand, and can learn the fundamentals of LoRaWAN technology.
“It is clear the world stage is set for significant, rapid market acceleration of LoRaWAN in the coming year, with France and Spain among the leaders in Europe, along with the U.K., Germany and Italy. As we look ahead to the rest of 2022, I’m very excited to bring the LoRaWAN community together at the LoRaWAN World Expo to experience the technology’s global impact and invite participants from all companies considering LPWAN solutions to join us to understand why LoRaWAN is the market leader and how it can easily serve their long-term LPWAN needs, whether they’re just starting their IoT journey or considering alternative solutions,” said Moore.
