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Vodafone says NB-IoT was a very easy choice; Orange says customers have needs today that it is serving with LoRa.
NB-IoT went head-to-head with LoRa at Total Telecom Congress this week, with a backer of each IoT tech justifying their position.
In the red corner was Vodafone’s chief engineer Luke Ibbetson, who is also chairman of the NB-IoT Forum – no prizes for guessing which technology he favours.
In the orange corner was Patrice Slupowski, vice president of digital innovation at Orange, which is in the process of rolling out a LoRa network in France.
The NB-IoT standard uses licensed spectrum to provide two-way communication over long distances and in hard-to-reach locations. It supports very large numbers of low throughput, low cost devices that consume very little power.
LoRa, on the other hand, promises similar capabilities in terms of power consumption, range, and throughput, but uses unlicensed spectrum.
NB-IoT "was a very easy choice in the end for us," said Ibbetson. "We looked at licence-exempt [IoT technologies] and came to the conclusion that licensed offers the kind of security and quality of service (QoS) our customers demand."
Vodafone and Huawei recently established what they claim is the first ever NB-IoT connection on a live mobile network, using Vodafone’s 4G network in Madrid. In June, the operator declared that NB-IoT will be the quickest technology deployment it has ever undertaken, with 85% of Vodafone base stations worldwide able to support it via a software update.
Furthermore, the NB-IoT Forum, Ibbetson said, is supported by 30 tier one operators.
"It is purely a question of momentum and scale," he said.
One major advantage of LoRa though, is that it is available for companies to use right now – and is being used – whereas the NB-IoT standard received its rubber stamp from 3GPP in late June, implementing it as part of LTE Release 13, also known as LTE-Advanced Pro.
Orange’s LoRa network in France is already up and running, and the French incumbent recently announced that the ongoing deployment is ahead of schedule.
"Today our customers have needs and we are serving them with what we have," said Slupowski, who added that Orange "will persist with LoRa."
Vodafone expects to begin offering commercial NB-IoT services in 2017. By the end of January next year, Orange’s LoRa network in France will cover 2,600 towns.
Orange is not ruling out IoT technologies either, in particular LTE-M and extended coverage GSM (EC-GSM).
"We have to remove from our minds this idea that one particular type of technology will serve all the customer’s needs," Slupowski said.
So, which technology won that round? Let us know what you think.
