Tag Archives: LPWA

The Cascading Technology Trap in Smart City Projects

By | September 20, 2017

A survey of smart city activities around the world shows that much of the focus of smart city projects remains on establishing the most basic of services such as connectivity. In fact, there is a clear lag in the deployment of technologies and services in smart city applications, versus what technologies enable. We call this… Read More »

A Year in Transition: A Look Ahead

By | December 30, 2016

As the year winds down, I wanted to share a few brief notes and observations. In short, I view 2016 as a ‘transitional’ year. This transition will unfold  unfold over multiple years. It will see new technologies and business models rising while others fading away. Some highlights based on what we at Xona Partners have been involved… Read More »

Comparative Look at LPWA Performance.

By | June 11, 2016

There are over a dozen LPWA technologies contending to provide connectivity for some of the billions of connected devices as projected by market analysts. How they all compare with each other is a hot topic in the race to markets. We recently published detailed analysis benchmarking these technologies in terms of capacity, range, throughput, power… Read More »

Will Smart Parking be the NB-IoT Killer App?

By | April 25, 2016

The outcome of the IoT connectivity standard battle which is in full swing today will hinge on a number of factors. One critical factor is the application of the technology. Applications vary in requirements as well as in barriers of entry. While IoT promises huge economic potential at a macro-economic level, it is a major… Read More »

The State of IoT Connectivity

By | March 14, 2016

MWC16 was a great venue to check the pulse of developments in IoT connectivity. We summarized part of our observations which we shared and published (link). It caused many follow ups by colleagues and friends who voiced a wide range of opinions that I thought some further color would be useful. To start, the main challenge… Read More »

Is IoT at Risk of Stalling?

By | February 8, 2016

The wide-area IoT connectivity battle which has been brewing for a couple of years is heating up. Early last month at CES, Ericsson announced the release of “the first complete cellular low-power wide-area (LPWA) solution” to AT&T. At the same time, the Wi-Fi Alliance branded 802.11ah as Wi-Fi HaLow targeting applications in smart home, connected car, digital healthcare, industrial,… Read More »

Top 3 Drivers of Investments in the LPWA Market.

By | January 15, 2016

Hundreds of millions of dollars have poured into the low-power wide-area (LPWA) IoT connectivity market over the past 2 years alone to kick start a fledgeling ecosystem of companies across a wide range of products and services. In the process of due diligence and research in this market that we undertook at  Xona Partners, we find… Read More »

Is LPWA for Mobile Network Operators?

By | August 4, 2015

You don’t need to be a wireless carrier to operate an LPWA network and provide IoT connectivity services to hundreds of thousands of devices. LPWA technologies operate in unlicensed spectrum which opens a wide door to anyone to play in the IoT connectivity space, including of course mobile network operators (MNOs). But is LPWA for… Read More »

What to Shut Down First 2G or 3G?

By | June 3, 2015

Telenor Norway announced it will shut down 3G network in 2020; five years before 2G. This is yet another example of how operators in Europe are diverging from North American operators by opting to shut down 3G ahead of 2G. 3G is much less efficient in carrying data traffic than LTE which is twice better.… Read More »