At home, we can always use electric power, and smartphones and laptops can use large rechargeable batteries.
On the other hands, IoT devices are meant to be used for the places difficult to get power or even humans will not be around, thus it require to be available for several years without batteries or re-charging for some cases. These IoT device's energy saving work's most constrained part has been the power usage of communication of LTE/PHS.
LPWA (Low Power, Wide Area) has been defined for low energy usage and wide area communication, and I believe network industries need to be aware of this from now.
There are new network service providers started in Japan, providing SiGFOX and RoLa WAN services using UnLicensed spectrum bands.
As for LTE, less energy LTE for IoT: NB-IoT will be starting, which has an advantage that it can be used on existing LTE network.
Currently, even we do not require any phone calls, it requires a phone number to be allocated to a device.
Existing phone numbers will face depletion next year, and 80 million additional numbers will be available using using 020-*(except 0 and 4).
However, will that be enough for IoT devices?
I would like to share current LPWA network status, and discuss best options how we can develop for the future.
