Private, Unlicensed LPWANs Drive Industrial IoT Growth: Connections to Triple by 2020

Unlicensed Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) such as Sigfox and LoRaWAN™ are providing much of the growth for the industrial Internet of Things (IoT) despite accelerated rollouts of NB-IoT and LTE-M, according to a recently published report by IoT global research firm ON World. Connected industrial LPWAN devices will triple over the next two years. Mareca Hatler, ON World’s research director, says: “LPWANs are driving industrial IoT adoption by connecting stranded assets, monitoring equipment from multiple factory sites and providing continuous visibility of mobile assets with significantly reduced connectivity and maintenance costs.” ON World’s 2018 survey with 160 industrial IoT professionals — completed with the International Society of Automation (ISA) and the LoRa Alliance™ — found that 57% are researching or developing industrial LPWAN solutions. Three quarters of LPWAN developers are targeting new industrial IoT applications that cannot be addressed with existing technologies.