The LoRa Alliance, which promotes the LoRaWAN standard for low-power wide-area networks (LPWAN), said the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has approved its technology.
An expert group of the ITU said the technology was suitable for the internet of things (IoT) and smart cities and communities.
Donna Moore (pictured), CEO and chairwoman of the LoRa Alliance, said: “We undertook this endeavour with ITU-T [the telecoms standards unit of ITU] to have LoRaWAN formally documented as an international standard by an independent authority.”
She said the decision “validates the market’s decision to adopt LoRaWAN as an internationally recognised standard and sets the stage for even more growth”.
Moore noted: “LoRaWAN was developed as an open standard from the very beginning, which was recognized by the LPWAN community and demonstrated by its rapid global adoption as the LPWAN for IoT.”
She said the alliance had undertaken the process “because of our commitment to openness and standardisation – which are critical to achieving the interoperability needed for massive scaling”.
The LoRaWAN standard has been deployed by more than 155 major mobile network operators globally, and connectivity is available in more than 170 countries, with continual expansion, said the six-year-old alliance.
The alliance said its members “closely collaborate and share expertise to develop and promote the LoRaWAN standard, which is the de facto global standard for secure, carrier-grade IoT LPWAN connectivity”.
It said “LoRaWAN has the technical flexibility to address a broad range of IoT applications, both fixed and mobile”.
Bilel Jamoussi, chief of study groups for the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, said: “Collaboration among standardisation communities continues to grow in importance alongside the accelerating digital transformation underway across our economies. We see strong commitment to building synergies among standardisation efforts in ITU’s work for the internet of things and smart cities and communities, and the approval of this new international standard demonstrates that this is a commitment that ITU shares with the LoRa Alliance.”
