Iot Now Magazine - December 2015 LPWA Supplement

DECEMBER/JANUARY 2015/16 • VOLUME 5 • ISSUE 5

LPWA SUPPLEMENT MultiTech’s David Smith on broadening the spectrum of choice with LPWA

STREAM TECHNOLOGIES Evolving IoT-X for LPWA

PLUS: Contributions and insight into LPWA futures from Sierra Wireless, Gemalto and Link Labs

Leveraging next-generation and virtual networks EXPECTATIONS ON CSP SPENDING ON SOFTWARE, HARDWARE, AND SERVICES FOR CLOUD COMPUTING, NFV AND SDN

3000 Revenue (USD million)

“

Delivering services in a more mobile, social and connected world requires networks that are more flexible, reliable, affordable and intelligent than is possible using traditional approaches.

”

• A radical shift in networking approaches and architecture is

2500 2000 1500 1000

needed to support the changing business needs of 5000

communications service providers (CSPs).

0

• Analysys Mason’s research indicates that CSPs and vendors are at the very start of a decade-long market journey to

2013

2018

2023

CAGR

Cloud computing

3910

7635

12051

12%

NFV

181

2433

29149

66%

SDN

319

3001

20112

51%

rebuild networks and leverage them to support more individualised, on-demand, communications-based digital economy services.

SOFTWARE-CONTROLLED NETWORKING SPENDING BY MARKET SEGMENT, WORLDWIDE, 2013, 2018 AND 2023 [SOURCE: ANALYSYS MASON, 2015]

DRIVERS FOR SPENDING

Enterprise IT and data centre virtualisation: cloud computing

Increasing commercial deployments of NFV policy control, ISP and IMS core

NFV product development of policy control, ISP, IMS, EPC and eNodeB

2013

2014

More trials of NFV: policy control, ISP and IMS core

2015

2016

Increasing commercial NFV and CSP SDN deployments in mobile: EPC, Gi interface, eNodeB and IP RAN

2017

Cloud computing and NFV become more mainstream CSP SDN gains maturity Demand grows for NG-OSSs spanning physical/virtual and IT/telecoms

2019

2020 Increased transformation to next-generation virtualised networks (cloud, NFV and CSP SDN) begins

Increase in the number of CSP SDN trials in mobile and transport networks

Decreasing rate of spending in cloud computing (data centre) Increasing rate of spending in NFV Increasing rate of spending in CSP SDN SOFTWARE-CONTROLLED NETWORK SPENDING TIMELINE [SOURCE: ANALYSYS MASON, 2015]

Analysys Mason’s deep understanding of telecom software puts it at the forefront of network virtualisation http://www.analysysmason.com/Trending-Topics/Next-generation-virtual-networks/

GLOBAL TELECOMS SPECIALIST ADVISERS ON TELECOMS, MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY

analysysmason.com

CONTENTS

LOW POWER WIDE AREA NETWORKING Given the huge wave of interest in the potential of Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networking as a major potential game changer for the future of the IoT, we decided to dedicate a special supplement to the topic.

With a wide range of current and emerging technologies to choose from, it’s certain that LPWA will remain firmly in the headlines for the next few years as cellular operators and a host of new entrants compete to win the battle of who can connect the most things.

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David Smith, senior VP, engineering and innovation, at IoT innovator MultiTech Systems, explains what technologies are available under the LPWA banner and their different roles

Nigel Chadwick, CEO of Stream Technologies, positions Stream’s IoT-X connectivity, enablement and billing platform in the world of LPWA

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Olivier Beaujard, VP market development at Sierra Wireless, explores the paths ahead in LPWA options and positions LTEM as the optimum solution

IoT Now’s Alun Lewis explores current market perceptions about the LPWA landscape and the different claims being made by the competing camps

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Loic Bonvarlet, product marketing director for M2M Solutions and Services at Gemalto, examines the security issues involved in moving towards a LPWA environment

Brian Ray, CEO of LPWA pioneer Link Labs, gives us an update on their progress so far and where LoRa fits into the connected future

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INTERVIEW

LPWA – broadening the spectrum of choice The technology behind the IoT, despite the inevitable hype, still needs a lot of development work done before our experience becomes truly immersive and ubiquitous. The hype, however, is largely being generated by the ‘look at all the wonderful things we can do with our clever sensors’ camp who seem to be ignoring the fact that the data generated by the expected trillions of IoT devices has to be carried from the sensors to the gateways and beyond. Indeed, the diversity of technical requirements for the multitude of verticals that could potentially be served is driving some of the fastest early movers to develop dedicated IoT radio networks independent of public networks, using Low Power Wide Area network (LPWA) technologies such as LoRaWAN.

IoT Now: David, can you position MultiTech’s involvement in the IoT for us?

DS: Our portfolio reflects our belief that there’s no single technology or protocol that covers all of the IoT. Going forward, if one requires different technologies which all have different degrees of applicability, then they are going to need to coexist. You can’t have a US$5 sensor that is also able to stream videos. At least not today - though perhaps in a few years’ time.

MultiTech as a company started out in the M2M world more than 40 years ago and our portfolio reflects our history of innovation in the space even including analog modems which for some applications still work fine. In the U.S. however,

analog devices are going to have decreasing viability over the next few years. Our company has moved more into wireless technologies, particularly, cellular, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. The ubiquity of these kinds of networks was one of the driving factors behind M2M’s growth and we have a portfolio that reflects that. Thus, we have a cellular portfolio that contains unique offerings with our cellular modules which are either embedded or act as out-of-the box products, and all of which are fully certified as end devices, just like a cell phone. This means that the person using them doesn’t have to do anything more from a regulatory standpoint to use or deploy them. Our cellular products cover the world and all technologies such as 2G, 3G, and LTE and, if someone comes up with some certification we don’t have, we’ll do it for them. We also have WiFi and Bluetooth portfolios, as well as products offering GNSS, and of course, LPWA radio connectivity.

IoT Now: What plans do you have for tracking the new flavours of LTE that are in the pipeline?

DS: In the beginning of 2016 we’ll be coming out with our LTE Cat-1 devices and eventually with Cat-M devices. Interestingly, I think there’s a good possibility that the module suppliers and carriers

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The problem is that you can’t just hook IoT sensors up to the nearest Wi-Fi-enabled lamp post or 4G base station without some kind of secure interface tailored specifically to the main bearer network and, even then, the bearer network may not be up to the data loading that some IoT sensor arrays require. To find out more about this crucial area of the next big thing, IoT Now’s Pete Dykes spoke to David Smith, senior VP, engineering and innovation at IoT innovator MultiTech Systems.

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David Smith, senior VP, engineering and innovation, MultiTech Systems

may just skip over Cat-0 and go straight to Cat-M - or one of the other competing standards being proposed. However, today the accepted plan is that we’ll introduce Cat-1 devices, then Cat-M and finally NB-LTE as they are released over the coming few years. In the IoT world, Cat-1 is a big step toward lower cost and lower complexity, with modules having significantly less complexity than their Cat-4 brothers. But the relatively modest gains in IoT applicability between Cat-0 and NB-LTE are such that Cat-0 may not be worth the effort to fully productise by module makers or deploy by carriers. This is because the ultimate goal will be performance on the order of NB-LTE and the effort required by the module industry to produce each module or for the carriers to deploy networks for these iterations is significant.

But we aren’t just about cellular. We will continue to follow Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technologies and offer products incorporating developments in those standards. And, of course, we are moving strongly into other emerging IoT technologies, such as the LoRa LPWA offering. We have been working with the LoRa technology for the last 18 months and have developed a product line to bring us into the world of IoT sensors and data gathering using low-power, low-energy, inexpensive and ubiquitous radios. We’re using LoRa radios from Semtech because they have much better operational characteristics for the IoT applications that most people want to use them for. As we go forward, we’ll always respond to our customers’ needs by providing the wireless capabilities that the IoT market requires.

Along those lines, we are even looking at WAVE technology as represented by V2X (Vehicle-toVehicle and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure), which is based on the 802.11p protocol. When that kicks off, you might see our products being put into vehicles, but you will definitely see our stuff on the infrastructure side.

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IoT Now: What do you think are the particular advantages of deploying MultiTech solutions?

What makes you stand out from the rest?

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You can take pretty much any of our products and they already have all the certifications you’ll need

DS: I think one of the main ones is that you can take pretty much any of our products and they already have all the certifications you’ll need to bring your product to the market or deploy into the field, saving a great deal of development time, effort and cost.. That is something that is definitely unique and sets our products apart in the cellular and LPWAN world.

customers. Moreover, by getting closer to our customers, we believe, we can better respond to their specific needs and address their pain points in a more agile way.

We also believe that if you’re going to use our products, you need to be able to do what you want with them. You need to be able to deploy into the places and environments that you want to deploy into and you need to have our product work with the equipment that you need it to work with. Take our cellular or LPWA gateways for example: they are used in a very broad set of markets for pretty much anything, so we try to make the deployment process as easy and as simple as possible; thus we have industrial versions that will exist indoors in an equipment closet or on the factory floor, as well as selfpowered IP67 versions for the outdoors or on a cell tower.

DS: We will be moving strongly in several business directions simultaneously. One is, of course, tracking changes in the cellular world where we already have a strong presence and we’ll continue to be a big player in that. So, as LTE evolves, you’ll see us evolve right along with it and offer not only similar types of products to those we have now, but others that incorporate technologies that provide unique solutions for particular situations or environments. We will also continue to support other wireless standards such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. In the IoT world, we will be deepening and broadening what we’re currently doing with LPWA. We believe that IoT will require many different technologies depending on the application and we will plan to provide those technologies, and combinations of technologies, to enable solutions that don’t exist right now. So, during that period we’ll be launching gateways supporting multiple technologies simultaneously as well as end device modules with multiple capabilities.

IoT Now: What is your business model?

DS: In response to the consultative nature of IoT engagements, we are actively moving from a distributor-centric model to more of a hybrid sales strategy – retaining our outstanding roster of distributors around the globe, while simultaneously developing a strategic and regional sales and support organisation to better assist our customers. This is just another example of our commitment to making the adoption of our technology as easy as possible for our

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IoT Now: And what about security in IoT? What are the issues there?

DS: Security is one of those areas that we invest heavily in now and that we’ll be working on through 2020 and beyond.

Our security approach incorporates a threepronged strategy. Firstly we will provide a Trusted Identity capability so that it is possible for the network to be confident that that device is what it says it is. Secondly, we will provide secure execution and encrypted storage within the computing elements of this device so that it cannot have its code examined or changed. Third is physical tamper detection, which will stop the device from working if it is physically interfered with in any way. In addition, we are partnering with leaders in the data security space as well as

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We also want customers to feel that when they use our equipment, they’re not bound to one particular technology or one particular carrier.

We have competitors who, for instance, only sell AT&T equipment, which is fine and we don’t have a problem with that, but we also have many customers who are deploying devices literally all over the world and right across the U.S. where they need to have, depending on the signal quality, devices which are compatible with Verizon or AT&T or T-Mobile or some other MVNO - it just depends on where they are being deployed. We support all of those and more.

IoT Now: What milestones do you expect to reach in the next 12 months and going forward to 2020?

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across the M2M and IoT value chain to continually improve confidence in the security of MultiTech enabled solutions.

This approach goes both above and below the lower level protocols, so we end up with a solid stack of nested security features. What this means is that when our device talks to the network, the network can trust it is talking to a genuine device and the device can trust the network.

IoT Now: How do you see the market developing now and in the future in terms of the players and their products?

DS: I think the IoT market will follow the same pattern as most other emerging technology markets. I believe there is something of a respiratory cycle about it. The inhale has all these little companies starting up, doing their own thing and pushing the envelope in their respective areas, and then the exhale comes with a period of consolidation, which may followed by another wave of growth and another period of consolidation. I think IoT is going to follow a similar cycle but, in the case of the IoT and the rapid growth that’s expected, it could be more like panting than regular breathing!

IoT is very fragmented at present with many smaller players, but you do have some of the big players such as IBM, Cisco, GE and ARM in there as well. What’s missing at the moment is that people focus on the endpoint side of the IoT, but forget that a network is needed to connect to.

Many of the existing cellular carriers as well as younger start-ups are looking at deploying LPWA networks. From our discussions with the large carriers, it seems they’re not looking at the technology itself with suspicion, but they are scratching their heads and thinking ‘how can we make money at this?’. A fair amount of work needs to be done to develop profitable business models that a large global or nationwide network provider can adopt to drive the deployment of public networks. In the interim, you should expect to see municipalities and other government entities working with companies to deploy smaller public networks and many privately operated networks springing up as well. We believe LoRaWAN lends itself particularly well to

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the development of private networks in certain vertical markets where both security and control of the network is important – for example in oil and gas.

However, I think that once LPWA networks start getting deployed by companies such as Actility, Orbiwise and Proximus, who are now deploying municipal and larger-sized networks, the big carriers will then watch to see if those networks are profitable or not and, if they are, perhaps we will see some consolidation in the marketplace.

That way, the larger carriers don’t have to work the business model out for themselves.

Another thing that could change over time is the frequency spectrum used by IoT networks. Right now, a majority of LPWA IoT networks are based on regional ISM unlicensed spectrum, but it should be obvious that Europe, which doesn’t have too much unlicensed bandwidth available, has the potential to quickly run out, and so eventually may the U.S. - plus the rest of the world. As part of our technology roadmap, we expect that by the end of 2017, use of licensed bands for IoT networks will be becoming more commonplace - if not dominant - as growth is expected to be really rapid and, while it might then drop off a little, such growth will quickly outstrip the unlicensed bands’ ability to support the huge and growing number of deployed devices.

IoT Now: So where does MultiTech stand today in relation to all this?

DS: I think that today, MultiTech is very well positioned in the IoT world as we have the right products and the right vision to not only supply and follow the market, but to be right there at the front and help to guide it. I know others in this space may say similar things, but I happen to think it’s true for us, especially from the IoT security standpoint. In early 2016, capabilities in our products will emerge which will allow very fast deployment of secure networks and devices, so that by the end of 2016, news of new, secure, capable IoT networks or new smart cities being rolled out should almost be a daily occurrence which is faster than many analysts have predicted, and MultiTech we will be right there driving that growth.

“” Once LPWA networks are deployed, the big carriers will then watch to see if those networks are profitable or not

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INTERVIEW

Stream’s COO - Kevin McDowall and CEO – Nigel Chadwick, looking forward to 2016

Stream Technologies evolves IoT-X for LPWA subscription management It seems a widely-held opinion that Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networks - and in particular LoRa – look set to take the IoT world by storm. This could be just as well, given the predicted huge number of IoT sensors and devices that will be connected over the next few years and the resulting ‘data tsunami’.

The value generated across the IoT sector is likely to be enormous for those positioned with the right solutions and services in place, but with LoRa happening so quickly, the most agile players are likely to reap substantial rewards. developing the platform for wider application, Stream claims that it has also addressed a number of other IoT related issues around Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Finally, Stream says that its platform enables cellular operators in M2M/IoT to quickly extend their wireless services to include LPWA. As for other innovative entrants into the market looking to exploit LPWA, Stream is now inviting these players to test-run their solutions and services at the company’s new LPWAN incubator and demonstrator facility in Scotland. Intrigued, IoT Now spoke to Nigel Chadwick, its founder and CEO. ▼

Stream Technologies believes that it is one of these agile players. Its IoT-X connectivity enablement and billing platform, is already attracting substantial interest around the world.

Initially developed for Stream’s own internal management of SIM lifecycles, it was then later made available to MNOs, with Caribbean operator Digicel being the first user. Stream says that IoT-X is fast becoming established as a leading LPWA subscription management platform, particularly given that IoT-X’s functionality has now been extended to include a LoRa WAN Network Server. In the process of

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NC: Stream was founded in 2000, so our team has been involved in M2M and IoT provisioning and connectivity management for many years – over which we have built a team with a real depth of expertise and experience in providing multiconnectivity services for IoT. We evolved from an MVNO based background specialising in M2M. That started in cellular, expanded out into satellite connectivity and latterly LPWA networks, including LoRa as the latest addition to the management functionality of its IoT-X platform. Stream evolved from operating in its earlier days as a successful MVNO connectivity provider to enterprise clients across most verticals in M2M and IoT, so it has gained a substantial and unique understanding of what is required to efficiently manage and deliver wireless connectivity to IoT clients.

Since 2005, we focused on developing our IoT-X platform to manage, monitor and monetise all the device connections relating to our own B2B customers. It was created to take the friction out of integrating with multiple network operators and at the same time building-in functionality to enable easy control of scalable volumes of connections across a large and diverse enterprise client base. We realised around a year and a half ago that our IoT-X platform and effectively, a replicated or ‘cloned’ concept of Stream in terms of providing all the support, expertise and related technical infrastructure within the IoT-X ‘wrap’, was an alternative solution to the connectivity platforms offered by the likes of Jasper or Ericsson. There exist a significant number of operators around the world who possess neither the requisite experience, expertise, or fully formed teams needed to efficiently and effectively manage M2M/IoT connectivity across their network footprint. In late 2014 we released our platform - that had evolved consistently over a 10-year period - for adoption by external parties and since then we have been on-boarding a growing number of Proof of Concepts and signing off Platform as a Service agreements.

Concurrently, we have also been busy forging partnerships with value added service providers, to provide end customers with a choice of connectivity/data/device management options.

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In January 2015, at CES, we realised that LoRa based technology was fast evolving and that it had the potential to really set the LPWAN sector alight. What we didn’t quite realise at that time however was the speed at which it would begin to spread around the globe. Stream remains agnostic towards connectivity types integrated into IoT-X, so developing the platform to include LoRa subscription and billing management functionality was a natural next step in its evolution. This was completed by the end of Q2 and in November our development team released a LoRa WAN Network Server element within the platform. We believe that it’s the only platform in the world that can simultaneously manage connectivity across 2G, 3G, 4G/LTE cellular, satellite and LPWA networks - including LoRa. Furthermore, it’s one of a very few platforms that manages subscription and billing on LoRa networks. This means flexibility in monetisation models, aggregation of multiple (discretely owned and operated) LoRa networks – effectively roaming management, simple device management, as well as enabling gateway and base station meta data and management.

Since 2005, we focused on developing our IoT-X platform to manage, monitor and monetise all the device connections relating to our own B2B customers

So, IoT-X holds strong appeal to existing private LoRa network providers seeking to create a return on their investment through opening up their network to others, as well as enabling new entrants seeking to deploy and operate LoRa networks. In reality, IoT-X has the capability to enable the creation of entirely new types of network operators. We call them SVNO’s {Super Virtual Network Operators}, whereby IoT-X is primarily or initially deployed to manage a specific type of wireless connectivity for a particular solution use case. However, we can also effectively make available alternative carrier options to the ‘adopter’ of IoT-X by virtue of the fact that other carriers/network types are already integrated and ready to ‘switch on’. For example, we could enable a car manufacturer to manage its connected car programme across cellular, satellite and LPWA from a single platform and across different geographies if so required.

LoRa and other LPWA technologies have the potential to change the IoT game in many ways – ostensibly it could displace some of the lower data solutions away from cellular mobile network operators. ▼

IoT Now: How did Stream technologies become involved in LPWA technologies like LoRa?

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INTERVIEW

NC: We consider Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) has been one of the main, if not THE main barrier to exponential growth of connections in IoT. The major growth to date in IoT has been on cellular networks. The pricing models, whilst differentiated for IoT (from retail tariffs, for example), have nevertheless had to take account of infrastructure and licensing deployment models as well as work within investment return constraints and demands. The emerging LPWA networks to a large degree are free from these characteristics and this can help drive down TCO - not to forget that end point/sensor module pricing and operating longevity are additional factors also radically reducing TCO. Stream is already seeing at this relatively early stage of LoRa network deployment new and innovative commercialisation models, as well as the entry of completely new players into the IoT global market that appear to really open up the prospect of accelerating growth towards tens of billions of connected end points over the next few years. Clusters of privately owned networks can be ‘aggregated’ and subscriptions managed across disparate networks using IoT-X. This is a game changer. These are the factors now combining to make the 80% of IoT connections forecast to be connected on non-cellular network infrastructures a reality.

IoT Now: Is Stream bringing down the TCO for networks?

NC: Given our investment over a ten year period into IoT-X we are able to offer AWS (Amazon Web Services) style pricing thereby radically reducing TCO. Stream’s combined infrastructure and technology, which we replicate for other networks as part of the IoT-X concept, vastly reduces the TCO of managing large volumes of connected devices. Because of the way the IoT-X infrastructure is designed, the technology is highly adaptive and flexible in terms of charging and billing models that can be applied to network usage. Revenue share, data bundles per sensor, per time period or on a pooled basis, as well as per message, and multiple others too are all possible. Furthermore it is also possible to bundle in and price other services such as data exchange services similar to those provided by wot.io in New York, or any other company in the ecosystem that provide value adds such as device management and enterprise apps. You can bundle all these together and really drive down the TCO, so that it makes IoT a feasible play, resolves scalability issues and offers a rapid ramp-up of volume.

IoT Now: How do you cope with the widely differing connectivity requirements that the potentially massive variety of IoT sensors and backhaul infrastructure demand?

NC: This is a real challenge in the fast evolving connectivity environment of today and a challenge that has been at the forefront of our vision throughout evolving IoT-X, realising that diversity is inherent within the communications industry and is likely to stay. Cellular operators have to deal with the differing characteristics and relative attributes of everything from GPRS through to 4G/LTE, and then there are the satellite

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operators with highly variable data capacity throughputs. In this context, LPWA is just another variant. Stream has always embraced and dealt with diversity in terms of designing and building a connectivity management platform to achieve a ‘single pane view and control’ solution, recognising that some primary connectivity types are more suited to certain IoT deployments than others. Then there are also secondary connectivity variants and different forms of backhaul as well.

Not everywhere has wired backhaul capability - or even cellular for that matter such as at sea for example – or consider critical situation solutions that absolutely need to get data from A to B such as in emergency situations. There are plenty of such scenarios where LPWA networks might be deployed from which the data is then backhauled over satellite. At the LoRa Alliance meeting recently held in Rotterdam, Stream demonstrated managing routing and transiting data from sensors on a localised LoRa based network, backhauled over the Iridium satellite network.

IoT Now: How can cellular operators use Stream’s platform to get into LPWA and specifically LoRa? NC: It’s pretty obvious that the vast majority of MNO’s use subscriber management and billing platforms that have been developed for consumer and corporate voice and mobile services. But they don’t have such systems/platforms for managing IoT. LPWA network deployment introduces a specific requirement for networks to be able to efficiently and effectively manage both vast numbers of tiny data transactions and billing models that are built around M2M. Many cellular operators therefore don’t have the ability to manage M2M connectivity to any degree of granularity.

Stream’s IoT-X platform can enable management of these aspects easily through lightweight integration using APIs, because subscriber management is already integrated into the platform, which works with any wireless protocol. So, MNO’s can take the platform and manage M2M connectivity in their cellular realm and extend it out to all the other integrations already on IoT-X, such as Iridium or Avanti for satellite; or any of the LPWA solutions; or they could say they’re not interested in managing M2M connectivity on cellular because they may already have an M2M connectivity management platform and opt to just use the LoRa functionality on its own.

It really is that simple. As mentioned earlier, Stream’s approach has always been a technology-agnostic one and it’s served us well. We effectively ‘future proof’ both network operators and enterprise clients and this is becoming increasingly important as global clients scale worldwide.

IoT Now: So does this represent an evolution of Stream Technologies?

NC: Stream has for many years continued to innovate and as a result now deploys a technology set that not only addresses many of the challenges inherent to managing IoT connectivity, but in totality represents a unique design, with an engineering and operational approach to enable network operators of all types to deploy efficient, robust and reliable connectivity ▼

IoT Now: What is one of the main barriers to deployment of the predicted billions of end points in IoT?

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services for IoT. To achieve this we have continued to grow our technical development and support teams over a ten year period, resulting now in a team that is one of the most experienced and capable around. Our coding is all done in-house, meaning we continuously enhance the software upon which IoT-X is based, plus we can customise network operator or enterprise client requirements very quickly. The outcome of this evolution is that Stream has effectively transitioned into a fully-fledged software house focused on fast tracking enhancing the functionality and capability of the IoT-X connectivity management platform and related APNs/backhaul infrastructure. The private ownership structure and our company DNA references ‘strategic patience’, whereby sticking to a pursuit of a vision over an extended timeframe has provided us with the technical know-how and experience to innovate, design, engineer and implement in a uniquely agile manner.

IoT Now: The fact is however that there are other LPWA technologies in the market - is there a case for co-existence?

NC: There are quite a number of LPWA network variants out there. IoT-X is already integrated with a fair number of these and is ready to be adopted and deployed – today. The agnostic orientation of our platform, our use of a single APN, the design of our backhaul infrastructure, are all primed for and ready for managing subscriptions and billing across different LPWA technologies.

IoT Now: Do the different ISM regulations around the world create any problems for LoRa? NC: The main challenge derives from the different radio bands that are used in the U.S. and the European Union, meaning companies having to ship completely different hardware most of the time. It’s not so much a logistical problem as more about planning where the devices are going to be deployed. Companies in the supply chain of equipment and solutions have to really think hard about what they are going to do with a particular device. The cost of components and the ease with which the device will interface with LoRa aren’t affected most of the time; it’s just that you have to buy a different radio chip. It rather destroys the idea of one size fits all!

IoT Now: What role can LoRa play in smart cities?

NC: In the context of smart cities, LoRa’s role is about enabling transit of data so that the data can then be made sense of, ultimately enabling decision making. We have seen data-driven

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decision making automated for many years in M2M and the smart city concept is the latest evolution of this – but involving much larger data sets from a wider variety of sensors, which usually also means more complex data sets.

Stream is in the process of deploying at its Glasgow R&D centre one of the first UK city-wide LoRa Networks as part of our LPWA incubator and demonstrator facility. As such, we are encouraging companies and other organisations, including universities, to participate in our incubator facility, to demonstrate and test, or even develop, a range of solutions and technologies relating to LPWA, including LoRa. Smart cities will be just one of several ‘themes’ encouraged by our team at the facility. One particular advantage of using LoRa in this type of urban-city situation is the substantial cost reduction it can offer over other networking technologies. Other advantages vested in LoRa include its ability to penetrate buildings better than 4G, its relatively easy and low deployment cost, and low power requirements. It opens the prospect of longevity long term deployments in volume.

The main challenge derives from the different radio bands that are used in the U.S. and the European Union, meaning companies having to ship completely different hardware most of the time

Stream, together with the Glasgow Caledonian University, is also working on other technologies under the auspices of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership which involve harvesting the energy emanating from wireless transmitters in the Glasgow City area. We have mapped the wireless energy topographies and our research is exploring the prospect of harvesting that energy to power sensors, which then allows assessment of reducing battery dependency, or perhaps extending the overall life of some sensors.

Potentially this could enable significant reductions in battery size – perhaps by as much as 75% - using energy harvesting for top up.

We’re exploring the concept of harvesting energy from broadcast sources such as television and radio transmissions and the irony hasn’t escaped us that we’re looking to use energy from one radio source to power another. How cool is that?

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INTERVIEW

LTE-M – clarity on the path ahead Freedom of choice is a wonderful thing – until you have to make a critical decision that’s going to affect your life – or your business – for years to come. Until recently, the range of wide area connectivity technologies for M2M and IoT applications was largely limited to cellular, satellite and WiFi. The last few years however have seen a small explosion take place in terms of new Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) wireless options, specifically tailored for the IoT space.

But which technology is the right one for all the different players – both private and public – now looking to exploit these technologies to serve their users and customers and build new business and new service models on top?

To get a better insight into some of the critical factors involved in making the right LPWA decision, IoT Now’s editor, Alun Lewis, recently spoke with Olivier Beaujard, VP market development at Sierra Wireless. Sierra Wireless is a company with deep roots in the M2M and IoT space that stretch right back to its formation around twenty years ago. Over that time the company has developed a full solution portfolio including embedded SIM devices, modules, gateways and connectivity and cloud services, encompassing 2G, 3G and 4G networks.

AL: Olivier, the LPWA space seems to be in a state of some ferment at the moment with many different technologies having come onto the market in a relatively short space of time.

From your perspective as probably the leading supplier of embedded wireless modules to a global market, how do you characterise the current state of play in LPWA? OB: The promise of extended battery life for devices, more cost effective coverage and better

radio performance for lower data rates all make LPWA very attractive in terms of making the IoT vision a working reality around the world. That said, as ever, within that LPWA promise there is still a lot of hype and uncertainty, especially where the all-important issues of standardisation, intellectual property and eventual scalability come into play. Sierra’s presence in the key standards bodies in particular gives us the ability to both closely monitor strategic developments as they happen and get a clearer view of the likely terrain over the longer term. Additionally, feedback from our customers gives us invaluable insights into the practical realities on the ground and how the strengths and weaknesses of each different option will eventually play out.

In that context, we’re continuing to see a steady growth in what you might call ‘traditional’ IoT applications that we’ve always been strong in, such as automotive, logistics, energy, utilities, enterprise and point of sale (PoS). Now, if you listen closely to the customers’ requirements, both current and future, while they might not care what the underlying communications technology is called, they do know exactly what they want from it.

For a start, the issue of cost is paramount and

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Sierra’s presence in the key standards bodies in particular gives us the ability to both closely monitor strategic developments as they happen and get a clearer view of the likely terrain over the longer term

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Olivier Beaujard, VP market development for Sierra Wireless has more than 20 years’ experience in the wireless industry and machine to machine markets and joined Sierra Wireless in 2009. Prior to this, Mr. Beaujard was with Wavecom where he was in charge of product marketing. He has held several marketing positions such as marketing director, corporate business development director, VP marketing and VP of business development.

Mr. Beaujard graduated from the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble (INPG - ENSERG) with an electronics and telecommunications engineer diploma. He also holds an MBA from ESSEC business school.

Olivier Beaujard, VP market development, Sierra Wireless

Photo: Didier Bizos

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INTERVIEW

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scalability is critical in terms of keeping component prices down and addressing the larger market opportunity. Standardisation of performance profiles and form factors as well impacts design and manufacturing costs. Finally, there’s the overall investment to consider and how this will be paid back over the whole technology deployment lifecycle.

Secondly, there are the individual power requirements for each M2M/IoT module in its own particular environment. Even if a device is installed in a location where there is an external power source, such as in a car or energy meter, it must be able to keep working even if that power source fails. Even if it’s not classed as a ‘mission critical’ application as such, its operation must be regarded as seamless and trustworthy by the end user.

service providers. Indeed it’s already here in its initial phase, at least in our product portfolio with LTE Cat-1 modules that will be available in early 2016. However, the real market expansion and deployment opportunity comes with LTE-M, which is getting set in the standards bodies next year and will begin to see deployments in 2017.

AL: So, looking into Sierra Wireless’s crystal ball – backed up of course with your insight into the standardisation groups – what do you see as being the likely LPWA road map for the next few years?

Finally, there’s the issue of bandwidth. After a long period where the industry has focused on pushing up data rates and squeezing performance out of the radio spectrum that would have been science fiction only a few decades ago, LPWA instead is concentrating on lower data rates. That said, there will be many application areas and markets where it makes sense to be able to support both high bandwidth services, such as video for surveillance, as well as these lower bandwidth demands, such as smoke alarms or consumer appliances. There’s also the related issue of spectrum cost and availability and the impact that interference may have on unlicensed spectrum compared to claimed performance levels.

OB: I’d be doing myself and the industry a disservice if I didn’t also recognise the intense activity underway amongst some of the proprietary LPWA solutions that are being proposed – more specifically the offerings from the LoRa Alliance and Semtech, SIGFOX and Ingenu. The sheer breadth and variety of the IoT universe does mean that there will always be scope for more than just one solution but, when you take into account the factors that I briefly touched on earlier, the rate of current progress in the standards bodies and amongst developers and manufacturers like ourselves, we believe that the ‘windows of opportunity’ for proprietary solutions is not as large as might have appeared several months ago. We must remember that cellular standards are all part of a long established and well-coordinated ecosystem that reduces the friction involved in the evolution of standards and that is why we have chosen to work very closely with the 3GPP standards body on this.

We’ve crunched all these different factors together and for us the optimum path ahead is clear: the LPWA future lies in LTE and leveraging the existing LTE cellular infrastructure from the

So where are we at the moment? On the LTE side, CAT 3 is already here while CAT 1 will be due for formal release in early 2016, followed by CAT 0 and we expect LTE-M around the middle of 2017.

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the LPWA future lies in LTE and leveraging the existing LTE cellular infrastructure from the service providers. Indeed it’s already here in its initial phase

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LTE-M also offers continuity for vendors and MNOs in all the other critical supporting areas beyond the basic connectivity such as security, roaming, mobility management and OSS/BSS integration

GSM is also in the process of being adapted for M2M/IoT traffic and applications, in some cases to allow operators with existing GSM spectrum to use existing infrastructure for this purpose while migrating their human subscribers to LTE services. The technology proposed here is known as EC (Extended Coverage) GSM and is also due to arrive around the middle of 2016 (check 2017?).

Finally – and slightly further away on the horizon – are the NB-CIoT/NB-LTE solutions being proposed by Ericsson, Huawei and some others – NB here referring to Narrow Band.

In terms of our response to these developments, as well as being deeply involved with the standards bodies, we’re also working closely with infrastructure manufacturers and other major players to ensure that our role as a key module and gateway vendor is synchronised with their activities as providers of network and radio infrastructure. Once again, our ability to merge different standards into one chip – such as we’re doing to combine EC-GSM and LTE-M – but still fulfil historic physical form factor and connector requirements means that integration costs are lowered and time to market is reduced.

Sierra Wireless is putting in a lot of effort to help simplify LTE-M and we’re already working towards bringing module costs below that of today’s 2G modules.

AL: So what are the specific ‘sweet spots’ that Sierra sees LTE-M as fulfilling?

OB: If you compare the key attributes I mentioned above across the breadth of solutions required to support the IoT, it should be clear that all the standardised technologies do meet the critical requirements of LPWA technologies. It should also be clear that these standardised approaches offer much more flexible and lower-risk approaches than the proprietary solutions currently available. However, there are several reasons why Sierra Wireless believes that LTE-M is best positioned to become the standard LPWA technology solution of choice.

Firstly, LTE-M reuses several aspects of the existing, widely deployed and well-understood LTE standard.

This means that it will be much easier for original equipment manufacturers, solution vendors and network operators around the world to implement. In addition, this re-use allows LTE-M to provide similar low-latency transactions to traditional LTE. As a result, LTE-M can support real-time applications such as conversational voice services, which are required for some IoT applications such as automotive, security, smart home, and many other industrial applications.

There are some very interesting developments underway here such as combining WebRTC with IoT – this makes it possible to merge voice and messaging

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services directly with the IoT domain with the potential to create some very innovative customer support or sales applications.

LTE-M also offers continuity for vendors and MNOs in all the other critical supporting areas beyond the basic connectivity such as security, roaming, mobility management and OSS/BSS integration. LTE-M will use the same field-tested, trusted and standardised security methods that cellular solutions use today.

And, given that LTE-M is just a physical-layer change for operators, all upper-layer cellular features such as global roaming, billing, subscription management and general business support services will work seamlessly.

As if that weren’t enough by itself to prove the argument, LTE-M’s ability to share spectrum with standard LTE devices makes it a more attractive option for most MNOs than other LPWA alternatives, especially NB-CIoT. LTE-M includes mechanisms that give service providers the option of designating LTEM IoT traffic as lower-priority than voice or video traffic from legacy higher-revenue subscribers. This capability benefits everyone involved: network operators gain major savings in both time and money by using a single network for latency-tolerant IoT traffic and higher-bandwidth real-time services, while also avoiding having to carve out scarce spectrum for IoT services that may take some time to ramp up. The mobile broadband subscribers themselves also get more reliable services and IoT users get lower-cost subscription tiers and options.

Finally, amidst all of the complexity around LPWAs, LTE-M is the most predictable solution. EC-GSM is simply not viable in too many markets as its spectral efficiency is low, the cost per bit is high, and it can’t simultaneously support IoT and higher-bandwidth users on the same system. And, while NB-IoT offers some attractive possibilities, there is still much uncertainty around what will ultimately be standardised and when.

For all of these reasons, the market momentum for LTE-M is large and growing, with a broad global ecosystem for LTE-M already emerging. While no one can predict the future with certainty, LTE-M is well positioned to emerge as the preferred LPWA technology for tomorrow’s IoT applications.

As a global leader in LTE and the IoT, we have the foundation and portfolio for new LTE-based LPWA solutions already in place. We are working closely with ecosystem partners and mobile operators worldwide to facilitate the finalisation of the LTE-M standard and accelerate its introduction to global markets. We can provide the design assistance, technology expertise, and technology portfolio to help customers in any industry capitalise on LPWA technology to seize the IoT opportunity in the form that best suits their own strategies.

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OPINION

LPWA – the ‘Things’ finally get their own networks After you’ve been in this industry for a while, you start to learn to trust your nose when it comes to new technologies, writes IoT Now’s editor, Alun Lewis. Exposed to the usual hype, disinformation and vapourware, it’s all too easy to become sceptical – even cynical – about many claims that are made. Once every so often however, something comes along that does represent a real potential game-changer – and that something, this time around, does seem to be Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networking.

There’s certainly been a clear need in the market for some alternative to cellular or satellite communications for some time now. With our obsession for pushing for ever higher bandwidths to satisfy humanity’s seemingly insatiable need for audio and video content to stimulate increasingly jaded palates, the much more

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humble and basic requirements of ‘things’ have been largely forgotten.

Coincidentally, these needs were actually identified around 25 years ago in a spoof paper (tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1216) “Gigabit Network Economics and Paradigm Shifts” that proposed that there were certain applications that didn’t need high bandwidths, such as tracking glaciers and the US postal service. Another, subsequent paper even suggested ultra-secure, ultra-low speed comms using neutrinos, and military grade comms using tanks with zeros and one painted on the sides.

Putting the humour aside though, the roles and characteristics of probably the majority of connected devices and sensors that will drive the next phase of our migration to a ‘smart’ environment have specific demands. Battery life

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Out at a LoRa Alliance meeting in Rotterdam in early November, there was a palpable buzz in the air, huddles of folk in intense conversation and, from the stage, real life stories of deployments, devices and successful roaming and interworking.

And that’s only one part of the LPWA story, where a mix of different technologies are under discussion: some part of the 3GPP standards bodies, aimed at licenced spectrum; others looking to exploit unlicensed spectrum via currently unstandardised, semi-proprietary solutions.

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If there’s one infallible guide to a new hot area, it’s the number of analyst reports that get released on the topic concerned and the last few months have seen a flurry from various quarters – all with roughly similar bullish conclusions and the usual caveats.

Beecham Research is just one of these, predicting that LPWA could provide as much as 26% of the total IoT connectivity market by 2020 – adding up to around 345 million connections worldwide. According to David Parker, senior analyst at Beecham, “LPWA represent the most dynamic and potentially game changing development in the M2M/IoT market. The lower speeds of LPWA are the trade-off for longer range, offering networks optimised for machine connectivity with much lower deployment costs than traditional cellular networks. LPWA will both compete and collaborate with cellular and other network technologies to stimulate market growth with more connectivity options for end-users”.

The report also warns of the hype around ‘big data’ applications where everything is discussed in terms of the 3Vs – velocity, volume and variety.

“Our look at LPWA highlighted that there are many applications that are not big data and not necessarily real-time, interactive or immersive,” echoes Robin Duke-Woolley, CEO of Beecham.

“So, from a connectivity point of view, the market will move towards 4G-5G for satisfying big data IoT, while on the other side LPWA and equivalent networks will address the low data IoT requirement.”

The Beecham Research report additionally investigated the increasing number of LPWA technologies including SIGFOX and companies in

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the LoRa Alliance, which are currently leading the LPWA field in terms of network deployment, industry support, investment and customers.

Most of these LPWA solutions use the ISM (Industrial Scientific and Medical) bands better known for use by short range wireless technologies like Zigbee, WiFi and 6LoWPAN. However, recent advances have enabled LPWAs to be established using the ISM bands over longer distances, up to 50km in rural areas and 510km in urban areas. Another LPWA technology with long-range, low-power characteristics is known as TV White Spaces (TVWS), which uses the gaps in between VHF/UHF parts of the spectrum, previously used for TV broadcasting.

TVWS promises connectivity over distances of 10Km and with superior in-building penetration when compared to 3G or 4G. “New entrants working in the ISM and TVWS bands are promoting overall market growth and providing a spur to action within the GSMA world,” concludes Parker. “Developing standards for the cellular operating community is a slower process, but the emergence of LTE-M and Narrowband IoT (NB-IOT) will allow cellular operators to compete with these new entrants on a level playing field of range, battery life and costs.”

These developments – just like the arrival of affordable and mass market cellular communications in the 1990s – are inevitably going to have major and inevitably unpredictable second order effects. This is especially true if you consider their impacts on the evolution of smart city concepts. If we can take analyst reports as one important metric of a hype wave, then the large number of smart city conferences being held must also represent another signal.

Indeed, a number of LPWA-based smart city projects are already underway. Interestingly, India is very active in both these areas at the moment, driven in part by Narendra Modi’s announcement that India will create 100 smart cities over the next few years and complementary announcements from Wipro and TATA that they are exploring LPWA applications and running trials.

David Parker, Beecham Research

Prajakt Deotale, Tech Mahindra

Arnaud Vamparys, Orange

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is critical, so devices using these new technologies – LTE-M, LoRa, SIGFOX, Ingenu’s RPMA, GSM-EC, Weightless, NB-IoT – are intended to keep running for between five and ten years with no human intervention. Other issues involve the ability of radio waves to penetrate buildings easily and, as always, the cost and availability of the spectrum itself.

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Paul Egan, Digital Catapult

Our research so far indicates that solutions which have low to moderate data requirement like smart lighting, smart bins, smart parking and so on are best suited for LPWA networks

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He continues, “Our research so far indicates that solutions which have low to moderate data requirement like smart lighting, smart bins, smart parking and so on are best suited for LPWA networks. Solutions with high data requirements like connected cars, are not suitable. It will be interesting to see how these technologies evolve further. In particular, how might mobile service providers use these LTE IoT variants to compete against companies, operators and service providers using LPWA technologies? LTE IoT variants are definitely late entrants in the optimised IoT network space and would need to play catch-up with LPWA for some time.

However, LTE IoT can overcome one of the biggest disadvantages of LPWA technology – that is, network throughput. This advantage could make it a preferred solution going forward.

Also, one major consideration here would be that both LPWA and LTE IoT are device dependent i.e. there are no commercial gateways available that will work with both. Therefore, if someone wants to move from LPWA to LTE IoT, they would have to undergo an additional infrastructure investment to replace the existing devices with the ones compliant with the newly chosen technology.”

The issue of how mobile service providers are going to react to new and potentially subversive technologies impacting one of their historic markets is provoking a variety of responses. At the previously mentioned LoRa Alliance event in Rotterdam in early November, Belgium’s Proximus and the Netherland’s KPN demonstrated interworking and roaming on their

two deployed LoRa network infrastructures, supported by Actility.

One perspective comes from Arnaud Vamparys, senior VP for Seamless Wireless Strategy at Orange: “As part of our strategic plan Essentials 2020, IoT/M2M is a key diversification domain for Orange. LPWA is an important network segment of IoT and it is also the segment for which current cellular networks require the most important evolutions. This IoT market segment needs long-range networks for ubiquitous connectivity associated with low cost and long battery life connectivity modules, which is typically something that existing mobile networks are not currently capable of.”

He adds, “In order to quickly address this new IoT market, Orange is deploying a national LoRa network in France. At the same time, Orange Labs is pushing international standards to address these requirements with a software upgrade of current mobile networks. This second phase is set to start at the end of 2016 and will further accelerate IoT business for Orange. We believe that the most appropriate option for European and African countries is to upgrade 2G (GSM) networks with a new standard called Enhanced Coverage GSM (EC-GSM), as in a vast majority of European and African countries, 2G territory coverage will remain significantly better than 4G coverage until 2020. Territorial coverage - and not just population - is a key promise for the LPWA market with objects located virtually anywhere and not only in most populated areas.”

Vamparys concludes: “Aside from EC-GSM, the 4G (LTE) standard will also evolve to enable LPWA business with an option called Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT). This option still needs some debate to decide its radio structure and Orange is participating in these discussions to reduce potential worldwide fragmentation. Depending on what the final standard(s) will look like, Orange could consider these option(s) for some markets in Europe, where 4G territory coverage can compete with 2G in the short term.”

This apparent proliferation of standards within standards is also commented on by Paul Egan, IoTUK principal consultant at the UK’s Digital Catapult organisation: “It is accurate to say that

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India’s Tech Mahindra is also active in this market as Prajakt Deotale – head of their Europe Consulting Services operation – explains: “TechM is supporting end-to-end enablement of several IoT solutions on LoRA. It’s important however for organisations to have end-to-end services that span across IoT devices such as vendor management, network consultancy, data storage, OSS/BSS integration and applications development which are all specific to LoRA. Tech Mahindra has been researching the subject of LPWA extensively internally; with comparative analysis of the several solutions available in the market like SIGFOX, LoRa and others taking place in order to decide the applicability of solutions on these networks.”

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mobile operators globally have been slow to appreciate the opportunity in LPWA and to make any large investments. This is partly due to a lack of clear market pull from their customers, but more importantly because no standards-based low power mobile technology exists that could be deployed within their existing networks until now.

In September ETSI/3GPP approved the use of the Narrow Band Cellular IoT (NB-CIoT) proposal from a consortium led by Huawei/Neul, Qualcomm and many mobile operators.

Interestingly, this standard will now be integrated into Release 13 in December 2015. It is a surprisingly rapid development, adoption and approval of a new standard which could be seen as a response to the LPWA players.”

Egan adds, “Early entrants in the LPWA space included SIGFOX, OnRamp, NWave and Neul.

These new entrants all proposed the use of license-exempt spectrum for their solutions, but had differing business models. Neul was acquired

by Huawei in September 2014 and since then has been developing the NB-CIoT system to work within existing sub 1GHz licensed mobile networks and discontinued the work in licenseexempt bands. There are many differences between the competing ecosystems and the technologies - but there are many similarities as well. Both approaches aim to deliver scalable solutions that solve problems associated with existing cellular systems. These include: significant improvements in link budgets – in some cases an extra +20dB: a massive reduction in power by re-architecting the air interface to allow end-point radios to be switched off almost completely allowing for many years of battery life from simple cells; and low cost infrastructure deployments.

He concludes: “If we look at link budgets, most of these gains are achieved through trading bandwidth for sensitivity and coding. This allows for data rates to be in the Kbps range and below and still offer a high probability of the uplink signal getting through even in very challenging RF conditions and locations. Costs are also saved in the license-exempt systems by using commoditised standard product silicon radios. In the NB-CIoT, much of the system has been designed to remove much of the standard essential Intellectual Property (IP), so allowing

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chip vendors to produce devices at similar costs to the licenseexempt systems. This is a big change to the current cellular eco-system where a small number of players collect significant IP royalties.”

These key – and seemingly eternal - issues of standardisation paths are also raised by Olivier Beaujard, VP market development at Sierra Wireless, “There are many different LPWA technologies being discussed right now, all in varying stages of development, standardisation, and commercial availability, which is causing some confusion for customers. They can be split most simply between proprietary and standardised technologies. Standardised solutions are more viable long term than proprietary solutions because longevity is a function of ecosystem support much more than technology. We strongly believe that LTE-M will emerge as the preferred LPWA technology as it is a standardised solution that will re-use the existing cellular networks and not compete with them.

If we look at link budgets, most of these gains are achieved through trading bandwidth for sensitivity and coding

“LTE-M is the continuity candidate for LPWA because of how it builds on the success of cellular networks in enabling IoT applications and solutions. Taking a divergent path on LPWA risks too much as IoT enters the mainstream and scales from today’s levels to greater ubiquity over the next decade or so. LTE-M delivers a stable future with a combined low-power and low-cost solution which uses the strong, field-proven security mechanisms now expected by all IoT industries. LTE-M can be quickly deployed in global markets thanks to the re-use of 4G/LTE network infrastructure and we can expect it to hit the market in 2H 2017.”

So, it looks like another level of etheric hum is about to be added to our already crowded airwaves – only this time it’s going to be composed of machines and things talking to one another. Just as almost every household already has a usually unnoticed background symphony of whirs, clicks and buzzes taking place as thermostats switch on and off and central heating and refrigerator pumps burst into sudden life, we’ll be similarly unaware of the secret life of machines and their private discussions…

Olivier Beaujard, Sierra Wireless

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INTERVIEW

Securing the LPWA environment – a step into the unknown?

The arrival of any new communications technology on the scene always poses a conundrum: while it might bring promise improvements in any number of areas, it might also introduce our industry – and our users and customers - to an entirely new set of security vulnerabilities. Recent history shows that, in many cases, appropriate security levels have had to be added retrospectively, adding time and cost to deployments and eroding trust in each particular solution.

Against this backdrop, IoT Now’s Alun Lewis thought he should sit down for a chat with Loic Bonvarlet, product marketing director for M2M solutions and services at Gemalto, one of the world’s leading secure communications companies, to discuss the security aspects and challenges of the LPWA domain and, more specifically, LoRa. IoT Now: Loic, historically the great majority of M2M solutions have relied upon cellular networks for connectivity. Security issues in this domain are not only well-understood and based

upon many years of practical experience, but they’re also based on the use of SIMs. The LPWA solutions not based on 3GPP technologies - such as LoRa - that are now appearing don’t use SIMs. What security management issues does this raise for service providers?

LB: There are probably two main areas that are currently rather problematic with LPWA - as opposed to the cellular world that we’ve grown used to over the last couple of decades. Firstly, in the absence of a SIM, how can you provide appropriate credentials to each device to identify it in unique and secure ways? A complementary issue to this involves the challenge of spotting cloned devices, where a device or sensor’s identity can be effectively hijacked for nefarious purposes, or making sure right from the start that devices cannot be cloned.

The second area of potential concern involves the now fast expanding LoRa ecosystem, bringing a wide range of companies, both old and new, into the space. Expertise and experience in IoT security are not evenly distributed across all the

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The current ferment around the LPWA (Low Power Wide Area) networks area and, in particular, the emergence of solutions from outside the already well-policed 3GPP and ETSI standards communities, means that questions now have to be asked about the security techniques and policies used by these new technologies. At the risk of mixing some metaphors, while we don’t want to cry wolf unnecessarily, we also don’t want to have to close the stable door after the proverbial horse has bolted…

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participating vendors and service providers now entering the sector, particularly given the extremely broad attack surfaces that this environment presents to opportunists. As a result, for the time being at least until more formal processes are established, both users and network providers must proceed very carefully when it comes to joining together the different elements, data and applications that collectively make up an LPWA service. Some system, device and application functionalities might need to be disabled or limited to impose some level of isolation and ensure that any attacker can’t get the keys to all of the kingdom in one fell swoop.

IoT Now: The success – and revenue potential of the IoT depends on there being a pretty open ecosystem that’s able to share data across devices, communications links, gateways, databases and applications. How will the deployment of LoRa affect the security environment that all the other players in the ecosystem, such as application developers and device manufacturers, have to understand and apply consistently?

LB: Security has to be imposed by design right from the start of any project – or, indeed, right from the very first discussions with device and sensor manufacturers and application developers.

Companies have to make sure the risk exposures associated with the eventual end-to-end solution and its specific operational environment are well understood. Understanding the contexts in which the system will eventually be used is essential in applying appropriate levels of security. Security

by Design principles are both well understood and well established and involve taking into account both software and hardware factors.

Skilled and well-equipped hackers, for example, can even use probes on individual chips, extracting information and commands before they are encrypted.

It’s also essential to have plans in place to be able to manage your devices and solutions across the whole of their life cycle, because tomorrow’s threats will be different from today. This issue is particularly acute in the LPWA environment where the long battery life means that many devices will be intended to remain in situ and

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unattended and unvisited for many years, especially if they are in settings hazardous to human health.

IoT Now: There are always going to be some ‘civilisation-critical’ IoT applications – such as the utilities – where extra security will be needed. What solutions would Gemalto advise here?

LB: For critical infrastructures such as the utilities, or specific use cases such as the monitoring of high value assets and items, the security inherent in an LPWAN transport network today might be deemed insufficient to cope with the risks currently at hand. In such a case, by applying a thorough risk analysis, it becomes possible to complement the network’s security with application security principles. These, at a minimum, involve using both encryption and applying signatures to the end-to-end data flows from end device sensors to the backend servers actually processing the data.

Security has to be imposed by design right from the start of any project – or, indeed, right from the very first discussions with device and sensor manufacturers and application developers

LPWA networks hold a huge potential when it comes to realising the next wave of the IoT vision and the deployment of smart ‘things’ across an increasingly interconnected planet. We just have to make sure that our next steps are made on solid ground – and that only comes through a deep understanding of the accompanying vulnerabilities and tools and processes that must be used to protect ourselves, our business and our communities.

Loic Bonvarlet joined Gemalto in 2011. He has 15 years of experience in telecoms and wireless development, support, technical sales and marketing. In his current role, Loic is in charge of M2M services and solutions product marketing for Gemalto, including its Sensorlogic platform and agent, MIM and associated services, and security and secure elements in the M2M vertical.

Previously, Loic managed Gemalto’s application engineering team for the North American market, helping customer integrate Cinterion® products into their M2M devices. Loic holds a Master of Engineering degree in telecoms and networks from Grenoble Institute of Technology and works out of the Gemalto office in La Ciotat, France.

Loic Bonvarlet, product marketing director, M2M Services, Gemalto

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INTERVIEW

Growing out the ‘smart bubbles’ of LPWA connectivity - quickly Any observer of the relationships between business and technology over the years will recognise those slightly awkward periods between the first emergence of a new technological concept and its eventual acceptance as a part of everyday life. During that phase, disinformation from various players, each keen to promote their particular angle, is often rife. On the other side, potential users and customers of the technology are acutely aware of how critical their time to market can be for their longer term futures. They recognise all too clearly the importance of placing a stake in the ground to signal their longer term ambitions to their own particular communities and markets – and start generating some real revenue.

This, to a large extent, is where Low Power, Wide Area (LPWA) network technologies sit at the moment.

IOT Now’s editor, Alun Lewis, recently spoke with the CEO of LPWA pioneer Link Labs, Brian Ray, to get his take on where LPWA currently was, both in terms of its commercial and technological maturity and also how the demands and needs of his customers were being met.

Brian Ray, CEO, Link Labs

IoT Now: Brian – we first spoke at the start of this year when LPWA was still, to a certain extent, breaking surface amongst the wider M2M/IoT user community. With your Symphony Link solution, you’ve added your own software to the basic LoRa technology to provide more functionality. Where are we now?

BR: In an interesting place for sure. For our customers – both current and those we’re currently developing for – they emphasise that they need solutions today. Their reasons vary according to their business models, historic investments and technology strategies, but balancing both time to market and longer term flexibility issues are critical to them. They understand the advantages of LPWA concepts to themselves in terms of lower cost, long battery life, better indoor coverage and so on – but they also don’t want to become locked into either closed and potentially monopolistic LPWA networks - or hampered by the sometimes glacial speed of industry-wide standardisation processes where the vendor giants battle for strategic advantage. The right tactical move early on can undermine even the cleverest ‘big picture’ strategist.

The right tactical move early on can undermine even the cleverest ‘big picture’ strategist

For them, the issue isn’t around achieving global domination by one particular standard or network – they’re much more focused on creating what you might term ‘smart bubbles’ around their particular targets. These might involve connecting an urban block for smart parking or lighting; an individual factory, office block or mall; or a specific application such as RFID that needs an economic backhaul solution.

We’re also finding some other very interesting drivers as well from unexpected directions. One of our customers already had a large scale deployment of around 200,000 connected devices that historically had used WiFi. Because

of growing security concerns in the enterprises they support surrounding that technology, they’re now switching to what they see as being a much safer and easier to deploy end-to-end environment – our Symphony Link solution.

IoT Now: So what are business ‘sweet spots’ that you see early LPWA deployments as supporting?

BR: LPWA is particularly attractive to those customers of ours who are transitioning their own business models from being focused on the supply of discrete products or single services into much wider portfolio offerings. One customer is a lock manufacturer who has traditionally not had a connected device portfolio. Our technology has helped them develop a whole suite of connected products and services aimed at battery-powered retrofit installations. Symphony Link was able to solve the system’s wireless connectivity and cloud data problem in a way that no other technology they evaluated was able to. With the competing requirements of low latency required for real time control and long battery life, it was a challenge that Symphony Link was uniquely able to solve. In fact, we wrapped some of the strategies we used to solve these latency issues into a recent Symphony Link software release.

Similarly, we have a smart agriculture provider who is creating value through long life soil sensors, and creating a robust and secure way to connect these sensors to the cloud has been a perennial challenge for them. Symphony Link created a 2x cost savings in terms of infrastructure and now the system can be installed by farmers without radio planning.

IoT Now: What is your prediction for 2016 in LPWA? The LTE-M and NB-IoT movement will start to solidify, which might give mobile carriers more to consider when thinking about adopting an existing LPWAN standard like SIGFOX or LoRaWAN. Either way, Link Labs is in a strong position with our private network offering because we’ve taken the power of LPWA technology and created a system where integrators and OEMs can sell solutions today.

This is a very exciting time for the industry and we are thrilled to be a part of it.

IN ASSOCIATION WITH LINK LABS 22

LPWA SUPPLEMENT - December / January 2015/16

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