LoRaWAN Growth Analysis and Forecast According to Gartner

On June 30, the technology consulting firm Gartner published the results of its study on the current state of IoT environment communication protocols. In it, they analyze their vision of each of the major current communication technologies: their level of maturity, their potential growth, their potential speed of implementation, and the degree of value that their adoption can bring.

Although the study is focused on the IoT environment, it is important to note that its results also apply to the industrial and infrastructure sectors, as it also analyzes highly used technologies such as OPC UA or MQTT.

Although these reports do not contain the universal truth and should always be read with a certain degree of skepticism – the reality studied by Gartner may not 100% apply to our close reality – it is worth highlighting the present, but above all future, role that Gartner gives to LoRaWAN technology.

In its famous “expectations vs time” graph, Gartner shows us how LoRa technology – and therefore LoRaWAN – is leaving the disillusionment phase and entering the adoption phase.

What Does this Mean? Basically, the market – including suppliers, engineering firms, and users – is understanding where to use LoRaWAN, which projects it is suitable for and which it is not, when it is the best technological alternative and when it is not, etc. But more importantly, what benefits and savings can be achieved by prescribing LoRaWAN instead of continuing to work as before.

Quoting the study itself:

• The standard has been deployed by more than 120 mobile network operators, including several CSPs in Europe. In China, Alibaba and Tencent are deploying public LoRa networks, but the major growth, globally, is in private networks.
• End users need to consider that Enterprises can also deploy LoRa as a private enterprise network, either entirely in-house or with a system integrator. In fact, private enterprise networks are the areas where LoRa currently appears to be enjoying the most significant traction.

Without a doubt, as we discussed in other posts, the main field of application of LoRaWAN is and will be self-managed networks. In them, the end user will be able to easily deploy and without maintenance costs a single network to control or monitor all the equipment and assets of their installation.

• Business Impact: The key business impact is operating expenditure (opex) savings from object connectivity. LoRa infrastructure enables the long-range connection of objects with both limited bandwidth requirements and low-traffic communications, thus enabling very low power consumption and a battery life of a decade or more, using unlicensed spectrum.
• Over the longer term, LoRa will be a viable technology for specific use cases.

In line with the above, the study recognizes that the properties and functionalities of LoRaWAN bring benefits to the companies that use it. Examples of cases where there are direct benefits? Well, if you are interested in knowing more, we invite you to learn about our use cases in industry, warehouses or outdoor equipment and facilities.

To finish this entry on the study, another notable point – but also very important – is the time they estimate it will take for this technology to become ‘Mainstream’, that is, for the entire sector to know it and have it in mind as a technological communication alternative for any project. According to Gartner, LoRaWAN will reach this point of popular knowledge in less than two years. It’s time to get to work!

If you want to start learning more about this technology of the present and future, do not hesitate to contact us! Link to the full report here.