IoT Connectivity Standards? Still a Confusing Mess.

62 million European households will soon have smart gas meters as reported on IoT Evolution with an annual growth rate of 27.8 percent until 2022.

We recently reported that the U.S. was behind Europe in LoRa deployments so when we saw this research report, we decided to dig deeper. We wondered, are all of these deployments LoRa-based?

Interestingly the answer is a resounding no. 

According to the article:

European smart gas meters use a variety of communication methods, the report indicates, including fixed RF networks and local interfaces to master electricity meters. Short-range radio communication using the 169 MHz frequency band is the de-facto industry networking standard in France and Italy, where smart gas meters are deployed independently of smart electricity meters. In the UK and the Netherlands, local wired or wireless interfaces are used for transmitting readings via the customer’s smart electricity meter. Several vendors have performed successful trials of using NB-IoT networks for connecting smart gas meters in the past year.

“Berg Insight expects that smart gas metering will become one of the first high-volume applications for NB-IoT,” said Tobias Ryberg, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. “The combination of low data volumes and the need for 10+ year battery operation is an ideal match.”

This gets us to an industry challenge. There are incredible economies of scale when choosing the right standard for your IoT connectivity. But which is the right one for your application?

Thankfully there is a place to make sense of the challenges presented by connecting M2M devices to smart homes, smart meters, smart lamps, smart cities, smart everything.

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At IoT Evolution Expo, January 22-25 in Orlando, FL, there will be a session focused titled IoT Connectivity Showcase. What is the best connection type for your application?

Is ZigBee a gonner? Is low-powered bluetooth, WiFi or something else going to emerge as a standard worth monitoring or even adopting?

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In a way, these connectivity choices remind us VoIP standards in the late nineties. Megaco, SIP and H.323 were some of the choices but over time SIP won and became ubiquitous. Part of the reason was the tech and telecom bubbles crashed meaning there wasn’t much interest in focusing on new standards. Not to say SIP isn’t  a great standard – we don’t want to offend.

How will the battle of the LP-WAN solutions shape up? No one knows right now but it is certain the future of the IoT connectivity market will be decided in-part at IoT Evolution Expo. We’ll be there and hope to see you there.

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When you come to the Enterprise IoT Event, IoT Evolution Jan 22-25, 2018, you’ll see IBM, Ingenu, Cradlepoint, TellientARM, McAfee & other major companies. There will be a special focus on Smart Cities, Security, IIoT and case studies.

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