LoRa and LoRaWAN

LPWAN also includes technologies that are proprietary and not sponsored by 3GPP. It can be argued that some IEEE 802.11 protocols should also be classified in LPWAN, but the next two sections will highlight LoRa and Sigfox. LoRa is a physical layer for a long-range and low-power IoT protocol while LoRaWAN represents the MAC layer.

These proprietary LPWAN technologies and carriers have the advantage of using the unlicensed spectrum and that, simply, is data plan cost.

LoRa/LoRaWAN can be built, customized, and managed by anyone. There is no carrier or service-level agreement if you choose not to use a carrier. LoRa and LoRaWAN offer a degree of flexibility only seen in CBRS and Multefire. It is important to understand the monetization impact on scaling when building an architecture using any communication.

Typically, technologies like Sigfox and LoRaWAN will be 5x to 10x lower in their data rates compared to traditional 3G or LTE connections...