SK Telecom on Sunday announced it has joined the LoRa Alliance and plans to trial what is has dubbed the Internet of Small Things.
The LoRa Alliance is an industry group lobbying for the adoption of the long range WAN (LoRaWAN) specification for low power wide area network (LPWAN) technology.
LoRaWAN is seen as particularly useful for IoT services targeted at remote, battery-powered devices because it can transmit small volumes of data over long distances using unlicensed spectrum and only requires a small amount of power to do so.
"As a member of the LoRa Alliance, SK Telecom will actively develop services applied with the LPWAN technologies to deliver new value to our customers through the Internet of Small Things," said Lee Hyung-hee president of SK Telecom’s network operations business, in a statement.
SK Telecom plans to develop smart meters that rely on LPWAN technology and to trial various B2B services such as location monitoring and street lighting control, among others.
"We welcome our new member SK Telecom, the biggest mobile service provider in Korea. We believe that our technologies will ensure enhanced connectivity among things, which will be translated into more diverse services that meet customers’ needs," said Staale Pettersen, president of the LoRa Alliance.
The LoRA Alliance gained a victory in March when one of its founding members, Bouygues Telecom, announced plans to launch a commercial IoT network based on LoRa technology.
A spokesman for Bouygues told Total Telecom on Monday that the network launched in June and aims to go live in 500 cities by the end of 2015.
