The LoRawan low-powered wide area radio technology developed for connecting devices in the Internet of Things has received a substantial boost towards standardisation with the announcement that Korean telcom SK Telecom has joined the LoRa Alliance and will collaborate with other members to achieve the international standardisation of the technology.
The company has also unveiled plans to promote the trial launch of diverse ‘Internet of Small Things’ services what it says refers to “the connectivity of small-sized things that measure and process a small amount of simple information such as temperature, humidity, weight, and location.”
SK Telecom is the first Asian mobile carrier to join the LoRa Alliance and says it will collaborate with other members to build a strong partnership with global telecommunications companies that adopt LoRa’s LPWAN, and work closely with them to develop related products and services.
The company says it will develop meters (measuring instruments) applied with LPWAN, and launch trial services by applying LoRa’s LPWAN to diverse B2B solutions, including bicycle state information and location monitoring solution, trade area analysis solution and smart street light control solutions.
SK Telecom says it is “conducting many researches and studies in diverse networks specialised for the IoT so as to ensure flawless provision of various new and innovative IoT services.” In June the company signed a MoU with Ericsson to collaborate on the development LTE based machine to machine communications.
The LoRa Alliance was launched in January by IBM and others at the CES show in Las Vegas with the stated mission being “to standardise low power wide area networks (LPWAN) being deployed around the world to enable Internet of Things (IoT), machine-to-machine (M2M), smart city and industrial applications.”
Australian company National Narrowband Network Communications, is gearing up to launch an Australian network for IoT based on LoRaWAN.
