There are three LPWAN standards currently dominating the space LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, and Sigfox. In a recent presentation, Olimex explains NB-IoT (aka LTE Cat NB1) offers several advantages over LoRaWAN and Sigfox which include:
- Higher speeds of up to 25.5 kbps (UL/DL)
- Single GSM base station can handle up to 100 000 NB-IoT nodes
- Single GSM base station can cover up to 10-100km range in rural environments, and 1 to 10km in urban settings
- Lasts up to 10 years on a Lithium 3V battery if less than 200 bytes are sent per day
The main disadvantage