Medium – October 28, 2015 – Radios drain batteries. By definition, in fact, radios radiate energy into space. The more energy they use to transmit, the further their signal will travel. So device developers have traditionally faced a tradeoff between range and battery life. You can build a Bluetooth sensor that lasts for years on a battery, but it you’ll get only 30 feet of range. Or you can build a cellular sensor with fantastic range, but you’ll need to recharge it every week. Read More>>

Fierce Wireless – September 29, 2015 – I’ve been thinking a lot about Mobile World Congress 2016 lately. In part, I’m just mentally preparing for a ski trip in Gstaad the week prior, the first time I’ve been skiing in forever (note: If you see me hobbling around La Fira in a cast, don’t ask). But there are also a handful of other reasons. CTIA’s Super Mobility Week just finished up earlier this month; while not approaching the stature of Mobile World Congress (MWC), it’s still one of the largest mobile-focused trade shows, providing insights into what we might see in Barcelona. Just prior to Super Mobility Week, we completed our first Mobile World Congress planning session with a customer. And since that was a cue to book my flight home from MWC, I soon realized that all the window seats are taken on any flight I’m likely to take. First world problems — I know.  Read More>>

Industrial Equipment News – September 28, 2015 – Hey! Will All this IoT Stuff Mess Up Our LTE?   Probably not, actually.

IoT devices will typically be low- to no-maintenance and work for years from battery power for a long time. Industrial applications will often mean that the device will be placed and, essentially, operate in isolation in the far reaches of factories or in the field. So, Wi-Fi won’t always be appropriate. Those devices will often be reaching out to report their data via cellular connections. Here’s the trick. Machina Research predicts that nearly 1.5 million (Yes. Million.) of these devices will be up-and-running within only five years. Will they be connecting via existing LTE networks? Sometimes, yes, though now the push is to create built-from-scratch LPWA (Low-Power-Wide Area cellular) networks. While the devices themselves only transmit small amounts of data, millions of ‘em could mean straining existing LTE networks (and clogging bandwidth pipes for the rest of us).  Read More>>

IoT Journal – Sep 28, 2015 – On-Ramp Wireless, a San Diego-based provider of long-range, low-power communication technology for machine-to-machine (M2M) systems, has changed its name to Ingenu as part of a rebranding process that also includes launching a network of access points across the United States. The company’s Random Phase Multiple Access (RPMA) technology is so named because it enables thousands of devices to share a single radio channel. It was purpose-built for transmitting data over a wide area while consuming low power.  Read More>>

Fierce Wireless – September 22, 2015 – The 3GPP took a big step forward last week in defining a new LTE standard designed for the low-power and low-bandwidth nature of the Internet of Things.

At a meeting in Phoenix the 3GPP’s radio access network working group agreed to standardize Narrowband-IoT, or NB-IoT. “The new technology will provide improved indoor coverage, support of massive number of low throughput devices, low delay sensitivity, ultra-low device cost, low device power consumption and optimized network architecture,” 3GPP said in a blog post.  Read More>>

CIO Magazine – September 21, 2015 – The international body in charge of LTE will standardize a version of that technology specifically for the Internet of Things, taking on rival systems for connecting low-power equipment like parking meters and industrial sensors.  Read More>>

EDN – September 15, 2015 – Wireless network technologies such as WiFi, ZigBee, and Bluetooth are fine for consumer applications of the Internet of Things (IoT), but many civic, industrial, and other IoT applications need to operate over vastly greater territory than these technologies can handle. Cellular and satellite machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies have traditionally filled the gap, but cost, power, and scalability concerns make these choices less appealing for the future. A number of low-power, wide-area networking (LP-WAN) alternatives have arisen that need careful consideration by developers looking to address these wide-ranging IoT applications. Read More>>

CIO Magazine – September 13, 2015 – While mobile operators often claim bragging rights to the fastest smartphone connections, another rivalry is heating up around networks that aren’t fast at all: Their claim to fame is that they don’t suck up power.  Read More>>

Telecompaper – September 15, 2015 – Public M2M network provider Ingenu, formerly known as On-Ramp Wireless, has joined forces with Italian smart metering company Meterlinq to roll out a public, nationwide network in Italy designed to provide connectivity for M2M and IoT applications.  Read More>>

Rethink Research – September 11, 2015 – On-Ramp Wireless, a LPWAN provider, has decided to rebrand and become Ingenu. The company is using the opportunity to launch its Machine Network – a public network based on its Random Phase Multiple Access (RPMA) technology, and converting some of its 35 currently private installations to help support the initiative.  Read More>>