German City Turns Smart Using Public & Private LoRa Networks

This is Etlin, Germany, one of the latest smart cities to hit the map. Since 2019, the city has deployed 150 sensors, measuring and monitoring parking and water levels, using a LoRa network to power it all. The overall value is defined by a number of benefits, actually, such as flexibility, time to market, extremely low. so you have no transmission costs, you have the long battery life. The IoT connectivity market is largely made up of four technologies, and LoRa represents a big chunk of deployments with 36 % of the installed base. It's a growth that analysts expect to continue, but will telcos play a role in these deployments? As you'll see in the city of Etlin, a new business model could be at play. The city of Etlin benefited from a public and private lore network using the THINGS network and the THINGS industries. The THINGS network is a free service. Our community buys gateways. The price range is usually for a gateway between let's say 50 and 2000 euro. The THINGS industries uses that same LoRa network, but connects to an enterprise-grade server known as a Things Stack. So more enterprise features that we charge a fee for, and this fee is based on the deployment size. It represents a growing trend of democratizing IoT through a decentralized internet. In Europe, particularly Germany, the Things network has a large presence. Historically, there was no German national telecom operator that decided to deploy a public LoRaWAN network. And that makes it a really interesting market for us. In the United States, the Helium network is gaining traction. This is another crowdsource initiative described as a crypto blockchain network that works with LoRaWAN. We've really changed the economics of how anyone can build wireless networks. In Etlin, the public LoRa network was an easy way to get started. It is, it is really... It's really easy to prototype things and to build, yeah, useful applications. The sensors were developed by a number of local players. They're managed along with the gateways by the local utility. Some of those projects included. We have groundwater level measurements going on in around 40 reference stations. And we also display this dashboard. publicly on the town's internet homepage. We started early last year already with CO2 level measurement and ventilation alarms in office buildings and schools. And the third one, which is very interesting, we have a project going on which surveys streets for flood alarms in exposed areas. So as soon as a flooding is detected. phone text message will be sent to the technicians to charge. That's the systems integrator involved with gathering the data from the sensors. He uses the ThinkStack to analyze the data and then uses his own platform to visualize it for the city. So usually we use the open community network for applications which do not send too many data and where we can work without SLAs of support. This is also the standard. not when it comes to prototyping new applications. For critical applications such as flood warnings, winter road service where we need SLAs, or for data intensive applications such as the weather stations, we are using the closed networks. Now according to the city, the big value of using a public and private LoRa network for its deployments is the use of packet brokers which enable the city and anyone else using these networks. extend their coverage. So if you are using traditional solutions like with mobile phones and stuff like that, you have no chance to extend the network on your own. Packet brokers do this by exchanging traffic with other LoRaWAN networks to share coverage and improve the overall network performance. And this could be two networks sitting next to each other, but it's good. also be that there are infrastructure companies that are not interested in deploying sensors but that have access to really good sites to install gateways and they want to be able to sell that capacity to other networks that want to make use of that coverage. Exact savings for the city have yet to be determined, however Etling can say it's been able to streamline its operations using data collected from the sensors. Plus, the city and the utility are able to innovate and customize using this solution. They're now reselling this to other cities. The city has outsourced the sensors and the gateways to the utility company of Ettlingen, Stadtwerke Ettlingen, and are basically reselling the whole solution. So it's clear in the new world of IoT, telcos don't rule the world. like they used to. Instead, we're seeing new players enter the field, unveiling networks for developers to use for free, assuming that in the future they'll benefit. And as we've seen in the city of Etlin, that appears to be the case. For more coverage on IoT and LoRa Network specifically, be sure to stick with Current Insights and if you have a question or comment on this story, hit the button below.