With several shakeups over the past few years, the state of the low power wide area networking (LPWAN) market is not always clear. However, the reality is that all the pieces are in place, and market demand paired with continuous technology evolution is fueling a rapid shift to massive IoT. LoRaWAN remains the clear choice for IoT projects where cost-effective, low-bandwidth, low-power connectivity is needed – which is approximately 90 percent of the total IoT market. Which is what the LoRa Alliance would say, of course; but there are good reasons to say it, as well.
The LoRa Alliance expects LoRaWAN growth to escalate on all four network types: public, private, community, and satellite. Private network growth [among enterprise customers remains a core strength for this technology], [but] commercial IoT satellite services extends LPWAN coverage via space, and developing public and community networks are increasingly multi-national and continue to be deployed and densified. Best of all, collaboration across these networks will grow with more roaming agreements – which are more democratized than cellular ones.
Business model flexibility is also contributing to the spread of LoRaWAN. Unlike cellular IoT technologies, where there is only a public operator model, or Wi-Fi, which is (mostly) only private network business, LoRaWAN can be deployed via public, private, and community network operators, as well as businesses that build radio access networks and sell bandwidth to public operators. Each uses a different business model, which allows LoRaWAN to meet the cost and technical requirements for any massive IoT application.
And we expect new models to emerge over time.
The demarcation between LoRaWAN and the other LPWAN technologies is getting clearer – driven by technical and ecosystem superiority. This is the reason for such growth in the utilities market, where LoRaWAN already leads deployments in the water and gas segments. We also see growth in smart lighting, smart buildings, and smart industries – led by oil and gas, manufacturing, mining, and construction, which all provide excellent examples for future applications. Beyond these core verticals, a true shift has occurred, which will extend in 2025 and beyond.
LoRaWAN is starting to enter our daily lives, even if people are not aware just yet. You’re in a LoRaWAN environment at more than 10,000 Starbucks locations in the US, for example. Its first use case was for cold storage monitoring, but infrastructure is now in place for a full range of IoT solutions. Similar deployments exist at Chick-fil-A, Shake Shack, Five Guys, and Hard Rock Cafe. Airports around the world are deploying LoRaWAN, including Amsterdam, Pittsburgh, and Istanbul for a wide range of connected operational use cases.
Another trend to watch for in 2025 is about how powerful LoRaWAN is not just for business efficiencies, but for people and the planet. Again, the examples are numerous: environmental monitoring and wildlife preservation, water quality monitoring and conservation, food safety and security, climate change protection, early wildfire and gas leak detection, and panic buttons to summon police, search and rescue systems – and many more.
In the end, cost is a strong factor for this continuing growth. With scale, both gateway and coverage costs are decreasing – and will decrease further over time. The LoRa Alliance is investing in tech developments to enable further cost reductions, like the Relay and walk/drive-by reading features that contribute to economies of scale. The ecosystem is moving towards pre-integrated and plug-and-play solutions to accelerate deployments and further scale. Additionally, public/private community roaming collaborations are bringing costs down further.
LoRaWAN will drive massive IoT in 2025 because the technology is so accessible – low-cost and open standard, using unlicensed bands and open-source implementations. It is highly modular and well-integrated with other systems. It is like Lego, in ways – where, with one, you can build toy cars, houses, excavators, and with the other you can build solutions to connect and monitor the same sorts of inventions in the real world. The use cases you can build with LoRaWAN are only limited only by the imagination.
