Semtech and TTI to launch hybrid LoRaWAN and cellular IoT solutions

Two in two days for The Things Industries (TTI), and further progress towards a ‘unified LPWAN world’; Semtech Corporation, in charge of the LoRa technology for low-power wide-area (LPWA) IoT connectivity, has just announced a deal with TTI, the Dutch LoRaWAN collective, plus others, on hybrid LoRaWAN and cellular IoT products. The Camarillo chip company said it is preparing to bring hybrid cellular and LoRaWAN to market.

Semtech’s strategy is hardly a surprise; it closed a deal for cellular IoT module maker and roaming operator Sierra Wireless last month. The new partnership with TTI, which announced a deal with Sigfox parent Unabiz at MWC yesterday (February 27), is to develop “new solutions that combine cellular and LoRaWAN to enable more IoT use cases, faster adoption, easier integration and quicker time-to-market,” Semtech said in a statement.

TTI, which provides cloud-based LoRaWAN server infrastructure and support, announced this month (actually at the end of last year in these pages) that it had passed one million connected devices on its LoRaWAN management platform. Semtech said it will work with a range of other LoRaWAN partners, alongside, to address leverage cellular IoT, notably NB-IoT and LTE-M, as a complement to LoRaWAN.

The big challenge is to solve the complexity of integrating end-to-end global IoT connectivity, it said – which has, to date, slowed-down “IoT adoption at scale”. Semtech quoted a survey by Analysys Mason. The performance characteristics of LoRa devices and LoRaWAN (and also proprietary LoRa-based) networks, plus the wide availability of IoT hardware, is complemented by the more-global availability of cellular-based IoT tech, it noted. 

Ross Gray, vice president and general manager of the IoT division at Semtech, said: “We are bringing together … [these] ecosystems to provide LoRaWAN developers with the ubiquity of cellular connectivity, and all customers with best-in-class solutions for IoT. Working closely with partners such as TTI… we are creating a more reliable and efficient network of IoT products and solutions that not only offer enhanced network capacity, scalability, and cost efficiency for our customers, but that also help to enable the transformation to a smarter, more sustainable planet.”

Wienke Giezeman, chief executive and co-founder at TTI, commented: “This partnership is testament to our commitment to provide customers with a secure, predictable, and scalable IoT network infrastructure for their gateway backhauls utilizing LoRaWAN… Our customers are actively using a wide range of connectivity options for their IoT solutions. Together with partners… we are pushing further integration between cellular and LoRa. We have an exciting roadmap of innovations on the edge… coming in 2023, solving concrete pain points around data availability, backhaul security, and backhaul cost predictability. Exciting times ahead.”