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Dutch incumbent sees cellular IoT technology as complementary to unlicensed LoRa.
KPN this week became the first operator to trial LTE-Machine Type Communications (LTE-M), and said it expects the IoT technology to go into service by the end of 2017.
In a statement on Thursday, the Dutch incumbent said it views LTE-M as a future-proof alternative for M2M use cases currently supported by 2G and 3G networks.
"Up until now, the module price of a 4G M2M module was significantly higher than the price of a 2G or 3G M2M module," KPN said. "The introduction of LTE-M will change this. The LTE-M technology was standardised earlier this year in release 13 of the cellular standard 3GPP."
The telco also sees LTE-M as complementary to Long Range Wide Area Networking (LoRaWAN, or simply LoRa), another low-power, wide area networking (LPWAN) technology for IoT services that unlike LTE-M, uses unlicensed spectrum.
"Where LoRa focuses on IoT use cases with a battery lifetime up to 15 years and a maximum data speed of 50 Kbps, LTE-M focuses on use cases that support data speeds up to 1 Mbps and a battery lifetime of multiple years, considering frequent communication," KPN said.
Therefore, LTE-M can be positioned between LoRa, which is used mainly for sensor-based applications, and 4G M2M, which is used for bandwidth-hungry services like infotainment applications in connected cars, for example.
"Typical use cases for LTE-M are payment terminals, electricity meters and fleet management," KPN said.
KPN said it expects LTE-M modules to become more widely available throughout 2017, and that its network will be ready to offer LTE-M-based services by the end of next year.
