The economics of NB-IoT and LoRa

What drives the profit or loss for an IoT service? People seem to be very confused about which line item is most important here.Should you worry about which cloud service to choose? Should you subsidise the devices for the end user? Is the cost of spectrum meaningful? Which items matter in network CAPEX and OPEX? Mobile Experts has completed some ROI calculations that boil these decisions down to some simple conclusions. The choice between NB-IoT and LoRa, for example, is not simple. A NB-IoT network can be deployed inexpensively via software upgrade to an existing LTE network, so that’s clearly the best option if it’s available. If not, then some operators will save network CAPEX if they choose LoRa instead. Others will choose to use NB-IoT based on terrain or other coverage issues. LoRa devices are also cheaper, at least for now.