The GSMA has thrown its weight behind the use of Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) technologies for the Internet of Things after launching a new initiative to kickstart the market.
Backed by 26 companies, the Mobile IoT Initiative has been established to speed up the commercialisation of mobile IoT technologies in licensed LPWA spectrum by running demonstrations, proof-of-concepts and trials of complimentary LPWA technologies.
European players Alcatel-Lucent, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Gemalto, Nokia, Orange, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telenor and Vodafone are amongst those involved in the initiative.
Also pledging support are AT&T, China Mobile, Huawei, Intel, NTT DOCOMO, Qualcomm, Sierra Wireless, Singtel and Telstra, amongst others.
The GSMA said that LPWA represented “a huge market opportunity” for IoT, due to its ability to facilitate low-data, low-power M2M applications that can be left unattended over a long period of time.
It claimed that the technology represented “a huge market opportunity as the IoT scales.”
However, the industry body added that the market could not rely on one single technology to address all LPWA use cases. This being so, the group plans to propose three LPWA standards to 3GPP, which it has labelled LTE Evolutions, GSM evolutions and Clean Slate technologies.
Initial specifications for the projects’ LPWA solutions are expected to be completed by the end of the year, with an initial implementation pinned for early 2016 and full commercial solutions following later.
Alex Sinclair, the GSMA’s Acting Director General and CTO, said: “The market opportunity for LPWA will be a significant driver in the development of the IoT and it’s essential that the mobile industry address the requirements for LPWA cases early on.
“The industry is clearly united behind the Mobile IoT Initiative, providing a common vision to accelerate the availability of industry standard solutions, removing market fragmentation and accelerating adoption.”