IoT Leadership
According to market research firm Gartner, the size of the global IoT market and the number of devices connected to IoT networks are predicted to increase from US$600 billion to US$1.7 trillion and from 3.8 billion to 20.8 billion between 2014 and 2020, respectively.
In these circumstances, mobile carriers are fiercely competing for global IoT standardization leadership. Huawei, KT and LG U+ have formed a narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) alliance, while SK Telecom, Orange and Comcast are making use of the LoRa network.
SK Telecom established the world’s first nationwide IoT network by means of LoRa in June this year. At present, such networks are found only in South Korea and the Netherlands. Members of the LoRa Alliance, which was organized in March last year, are regarding South Korea as their test bed for the technology in that the network in South Korea is wider than that in the Netherlands.
KT and LG U+, in the meantime, are working on the advancement of NB-IoT, which is characterized by providing IoT services by adding some equipment to existing LTE base stations instead of setting up a new network. NB-IoT can be seen as an upgraded version of LTE-M, by which KT is currently providing IoT services. LTE-M requires nothing but a software upgrade in existing LTE base stations. NB-IoT has been selected as a standard technique by 3GPP, and Huawei is planning to release a dedicated NB-IoT chipset in January next year. KT’s and LG U+’s nationwide IoT services based on NB-IoT are likely to follow then.
KT launched the Giga Alliance last year in order to penetrate the global IoT market with 500 companies such as Samsung Electronics, Nokia and China Mobile. LG U+ is working on global services based on NB-IoT in close partnership with American and Japanese companies as well as Huawei.