Room for Devices. Capacity for Business.
The usable capacity of a system is the number of devices that can simultaneously be supported per tower or base-station with a given data usage plan. Capacity is a limited resource and the amount of capacity available is heavily dependent on the selected network technology. You can only slice a pie up so many ways before you run out, and capacity works the same way.
NETWORK GAME
Choose a technology to support the devices on your network on the left. To win the game you must add enough devices to outweigh the operating costs on the right of the scale.
You Win!
Your network can support enough devices to offset the operating costs.
Sorry!
Your network cannot support enough devices to offset the operating costs.
Inadequate capacity hurts device makers, because they are automatically limiting their market size by shortening its length. The worst thing a carrier can do is to invest considerable capital expense in a network that can only lose money due to limited capacity. Everyone loses when a network technology has inadequate capacity.
Uplink Capacity. Uplink High Rises.
Uplink capacity is like real estate, albeit very valuable real estate. That explains why there are so many high-rises in Manhattan. Building up is the only way to provide more homes for people in a limited amount of land. Internet of Things (IOT) devices require spectrum to operate. And, just like real estate, spectrum is a valuable limited resource.
RPMA has the most bandwidth available of any technology with 80 MHz available worldwide. Other existing LPWA technologies have anywhere from 1.25% to 15% of that.
So not only can they only build single story ranchers, but they have far less land to build it on. That’s hardly the vision for the IoT with tens to hundreds of billions of devices connected.
Downlink Capacity. Roundtrip Transactions.
With the large number of customers that RPMA has served over the last several years, we have learned that a primarily one-way system—like every other existing and developing LPWA offering is offering—has almost no commercial value. Because RPMA leverages the 2.4 GHz ISM band, we have no duty cycle requirements, like the European 868 MHz band that decimates the downlink capacity. This means RPMA-connected street lights can be controlled remotely.
Capacity Scalability. Business Scalability.
Capacity scalability refers to the ability to increase capacity by adding more network infrastructure once connected endpoints have exhausted currently existing capacity. This capability means that as businesses thrive on the IoT, connecting and making their organizations smart and automated, they can add all the devices they need with no worries about their network filling up a few years down the road. Due to transmit power control and other innovations, RPMA is able to scale easily and for all intents and purposes, infinitely, as devices fill the network, whether by adding more channels, more sectors, or deploying additional towers to “absorb” capacity.