Heavyweight players exit LoRaWAN network, what is the impact on China?

 SKT and other operators who also deployed LoRaWAN networks at an early stage - the operational business has not taken off much. According to the foreign media enterpriseiotinsights, Bouygues Telecom, one of the four major French telecom operators, announced that it plans to shut down its LoRaWAN network in France in 2024, while launching a new plan to sell its IoT business and migrate its existing IoT accounts to its cellular-based NB- IoT and LTE-M networks. Bouygues Telecom was one of the first major telecom operators to support LoRaWAN, and its IoT subsidiary Objenious is a long-time member of the LoRa Alliance. Now Bouygues Telecom plans to shut down its LoRaWAN network, presumably because it's encountering the same difficulties as Orange, SKT and other operators that also deployed LoRaWAN networks in the early days - not much of an uptick in operational business. Important players exit LoRaWAN networks In a statement, Bouygues Telecom wrote that cellular IoT technology is coming later and mobile operators have become more sophisticated in pricing and roaming their services, which led us to make the decision to exit the non-cellular LoRaWAN network. In response to the rapid development of cellular networks, Objenious will re-accelerate its chosen positioning and aim to become the first IoT vendor in France to be able to offer both NB-IoT networks and LTE-M networks. At the same time, Bouygues Telecom said Objenious Starer products provided by the LoRaWAN network, roaming transactions, management platform and various analytical tools access will expire on September 1, 2022, the future will not provide related products for sale services. Bouygues will provide customers with network migration services to replace them with cellular IoT solutions. Bouygues Telecom added that by the end of 2022 (2023), cellular NB-IoT and LTE-M IoT will take over more than half of its low-power WAN device connections, and by the end of 2024, it will completely shut down its LoRaWAN network. Buig Telecom, as the first major telecom operator to support LoRaWAN, is the very reason why its early and strong promotion has provided the conditions for LoRaWAN's faster and wider adoption worldwide. But it is also the case that Bouygues Telecom's decision to withdraw from the LoRaWAN network has also raised a lot of questions in the industry about the non-cellular network. This is reminiscent of late January, when Sigfox, another non-cellular technology also born in France, was in the predicament of being sold off, and its main company, the world-renowned IoT company Sigfox, filed for bankruptcy protection with the French judiciary, and the French commercial court in Toulouse took over Sigfox The French commercial court in Toulouse took over Sigfox and its subsidiary Sigfox France SAS (Sigfox's operator in France) and started looking for a new buyer. Sigfox's demise was largely related to its own operations and strategy, which had given new impetus to the IoT sector by pioneering innovative models in a number of areas, notably breaking the mold of long-distance connectivity provided only by telecom operators and launching carrier-grade network services focused on the IoT. But it was also this innovation by Sigfox that laid the groundwork for its subsequent financial woes. A startup company can deploy its network to dozens of countries and regions with significant financing in the early stages of its business. However, network construction and operation is, after all, an asset-heavy business with huge investments, and the number of connections needs to be made large quickly to dilute the initial investment. In addition, in recent years, the development of the low-power wide-area network market has been far below expectations, and with the maturation of other technologies such as NB-IoT and LoRa, which have taken up most of the share, Sigfox has only achieved 20 million connections worldwide, which can bring in very meager revenue. Therefore, it is not surprising that Sigfox eventually went to extinction. Looking at Buig Telecom's exit from LoRaWAN network operations, it actually faced the same difficulty common to most IoT operators - the difficult balance between cost and revenue. Operators deploying LoRaWAN as a nationwide coverage public network form of service delivery inherently requires high network build-out and maintenance costs. Meanwhile, in terms of revenue, the past few years are the years when the low-power WAN is just taking off, and there is no better business model to support the network to gain revenue. For such a project that requires long-term investment and "no" return, even the huge operators need to judge carefully. In addition, from the perspective of social benefits, Bouygues Telecom's shift to cellular NB-IoT and LTE-M may be more in line with the trend of 5G network construction, for the news Bouygues constantly mentioned that it will create a complete cellular IoT technology in the future full coverage of the operator positioning, especially in the 5G era, has been slow to act on NB-IoT and LTE-M Bouygues more need "Decisive" and "strong". Therefore, the withdrawal of Bouygues Telecom from LoRaWAN network operation seems to be an indirect confirmation for the operator that LoRaWAN-based public network may not be the best choice, but this will not affect the development of LoRa, as it may be that a private network or private network flexible deployment model is the best home for LoRa. Bouygues Telecom's withdrawal from LoRaWAN network has limited impact The LoRa or LoRaWAN market will not be so easily disrupted, and the impact on domestic and foreign countries will be limited, especially for the development of domestic LoRa industry. For domestic, the possibility of adopting LoRaWAN specification to deploy public network is not much in itself due to the restriction of radio frequency regulation policy, instead, the flexible private deployment or private network mode injects stronger vitality to the development of LoRa. Many vendors have explored mature business models in providing private networks and private network models in small areas such as some factories and communities, and this model is just in line with the current domestic specifications. With the help of LoRa modulation technology, several domestic vendors have made innovations on the basis of LoRaWAN protocol, including point-to-point communication protocol innovation in campus and smart home scenarios, and low latency communication protocol innovation in industrial and energy scenarios, forming the extension and derivation of LoRaWAN protocol, effectively solving many pain points in actual landing scenarios, and promoting the continuous LoRa ecology in the country It has effectively solved many pain points in practical implementation scenarios and promoted the LoRa ecology in China to grow. And from the LoRa related devices and equipment shipments in the domestic still high growth trend can be seen, China is still its largest market. Internationally, on November 29, 2021, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standardization department formally approved the LoRa Alliance's "ITU-T Y.4480 Low power protocolfor wide area wireless networks" proposal (standard). (standard). Most of the content of this standard is based on the mature link layer protocol of LoRaWAN, which is basically equivalent to the LoRaWAN link layer standard in terms of technology. After the establishment and approval of ITU standardization department, LoRaWAN has been recognized by the most authoritative international organizations in global ICT industry, which makes its international influence further enhanced. As the main promoter of LoRa and LoRaWAN, Huang Xudong, Vice President of Sales of Semtech China, also introduced the progress of LoRa global deployment to the think tank not long ago: As of December 2021, more than 2.7 million LoRa-based gateways and more than 225 million LoRa-based terminal nodes have been deployed worldwide. deployments cover 171 countries and regions, and in 3 years, LoRaWAN operators have achieved a 3x growth to 163. Meanwhile, as a global IoT industry consortium for LPWAN applications, the LoRa Alliance has grown its membership to more than 400. Among them are heavyweight software companies and satellite communications providers Microsoft, Cellnex, EchoStar, Eutelsat, as well as well-known Chinese vendors such as Tencent and Alibaba. "Technology drives production, market validates landing", LoRa has gone from obscurity to becoming the industry de facto standard and then officially recognized by ITU, which is enough to see its unshakeable position as the mainstream IoT connectivity technology. Therefore, Bouygues Telecom's withdrawal from LoRaWAN network operation is actually a result of the market's spontaneous choice and a manifestation of the industry's continuous exploration of better and more suitable business models for LoRa and LoRaWAN.