The ‘Smart City Momentum’ is expected to bolster LPWAN deployment in the APAC region
The smart city drive has grown extensively in the APAC region as many of the countries stimulating domestic social and economic sustainability. Several countries in the region have already adopted the smart city concept, whereas countries such as Thailand and Indonesia are still in the emerging stage and are slowly coming up with smaller projects in governance and resident services. Small countries in APAC such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, being tourist attraction are currently attempting to achieve high-income status in the near future, and move further up the value-added production chain by attracting investments. On the other hand, developed as well as developing nations such as China, Japan, and India are implementing smart city at a higher pace. For instance, in June 2015, the Indian government announced Smart Cities Mission, which is aimed at developing 100 smart cities within the country.
The applications for the smart city are stimulating LPWAN market growth with innovative use cases such as smart parking, smart meters for utilities, and advanced recognition systems. These are a few of the opportunities LPWAN can offer to unify the numerous IoT applications available today. Some of the fastest emerging applications in smart cities for LPWAN includes payment of road/highway tolls, parking bay sensors, street lighting, waste management, environmental monitoring, solar power generation, traffic congestion Management, urban noise and air/water pollution monitoring.
In February 2018, SenRa and Nordic Automation Systems partnered to deliver LPWAN solutions for remote metering and smart street lighting across India. Also, in 2017, China Telecom and China Unicom collaborated with Huawei, along with other technology partners as well as customers, to run street lighting, water metering, or street parking using NB-IoT in Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Shandong. Few of them were already deployed on a commercial scale. Moreover, telco operator SK Telecom, South Korea completed an LPWAN deployment covering 99% of the population and supporting new tech-enabled public services. Further, in 2018, Spark launched new IoT network (LoRaWAN technology) across New Zealand, covering 60% of the New Zealand’s populated areas. Further, in 2018, Fox-Tech introduced OTO Hunter, Sigfox powered LPWAN incorporated smart lock for shared bicycles. OTO Hunter, researched and developed in Taiwan, is a smart solution that incorporates Sigfox’s IoT connectivity service to significantly decrease the power consumption of smart locks. Further, in May 2018, Sigfox LPWAN operator, UnaBiz in Taiwan and Singapore secured funds from a subsidiary of the Shin Kong Group, Taiwan Shin Kong Security Co. Ltd. Later in June 2018, UnaBiz introduced a new array of Sigfox powered sensors, UnaSensors at ConnecTech Asia. Such constant developments during the forecast period are anticipated to boost the deployment of LPWAN in the economies of the APAC region.
Some of the major key players included in the LPWAN market report are Nwave Technologies, Sigfox, Semtech Corporation, Loriot, Link Labs, Inc., Waviot, Ingenu, Actility, Weightless SIG, and Senet, Inc. among others.