It has been a long, hard road, but LoRaWAN is finally standing tall as a protocol of choice for smart buildings, smart cities and utilities.
At the start of this year, LoRa Alliance CEO Alper Yegin wrote that LoRaWAN was like Lego, with use cases ‘limited only by the imagination.’ With global adoption and robust standards now in place, ABI Research’s prediction that LoRa would be the leading non-cellular LPWA (low power wide area) network technology by 2026 is starting to bear fruit. Yet it is vitally important for businesses to get the big deployment decisions right.
Steven Drewett is CEO of Concept13, which combines consultancy with being Europe’s leading supplier of LoRaWAN hardware. Having ‘been around since the outset’, as Drewett puts it, there is a wealth of experience on which to draw. Drewett estimates that in around 30% of cases, he advises potential clients that LoRaWAN isn’t the right fit for their project; but for those which are, his goal is to make the most of it. The first question one multi-million-pound company asked was whether LoRaWAN was the right fit. It evidently was: they are now deploying to more than 90 countries.
This experience – not to mention judiciousness – helps give Concept13 an assay mark of quality. Yet what truly makes a winning proposition is combining quality with volume.
From sensors to gateways, successful LoRaWAN deployments are a team effort. Concept13 aims to bring it all together with leading European sensor manufacturers MClimate, Elsys and Synetica on board, as well as MultiTech for gateways, and network management provider LORIOT. Together, Drewett notes, is that 95% of sensor needs across smart buildings, housing, energy and environmental monitoring are covered by these European manufacturers.
Too many companies have been burned by going for the cheap option which looks good on paper, but results in mounting costs due to regular hardware failures, replacement and maintenance. Concept13’s EU sensor collaboration solves this. The production quality of sensors from trusted EU & UK manufacturers is higher, but through acquiring at greater volume, the cost to the end customer is much the same.
“Whenever a new technology emerges with promises of billions of connected devices, there’s a rush to jump on board — often without the necessary maturity or genuine innovation,” Drewett explains. “And that’s where it’s been a big struggle, because too many companies who want to adopt LoRaWAN or IoT, risk taking on these technologies that simply haven’t had the investment or deliver the reliability.
“When the cost of installation exceeds the cost of the sensor and you have to go back and revisit after six months, it doesn’t make it very commercially viable,” Drewett adds. “And a lot of companies have fallen foul and probably given up on LoRaWAN and IoT because they’ve selected questionable manufacturers. They’ve gone for price rather than realistic investment, given the value they need to attain long-term.”
Concept13 will be at IoT Tech Expo Europe on September 24-25 showcasing the benefits of working with the top tier manufacturers. “That’s our key focus now,” explains Drewett. “If you want the lifetime value out of the sensors, if you don’t want to keep revisiting every year to change batteries, then choose Concept13, because the three companies that we’ve selected, will give you that longevity and performance.”
