Low-power wide-area network alliances endlessly "invisible hands" to control market forces

If you want to select keywords in the field of Internet of Things in 2016, low-power wide-area networks (LPWAN) must be the top three core vocabulary. In this year, the NB-IoT core protocol was frozen, LoRa was popularized in the country and application acceleration, and other low-power wide-area network technologies were applied in many fields.

However, in addition to technical standards and market expansion, there is a very typical phenomenon in this field, that is, multiple alliances are established and activities are carried out. Although there are a large number of industrial alliances in the present, in the author's view, in the early stage of the launch of low-power wide-area networks, in the form of industrial alliances, zeroing into the whole, accelerating the improvement and maturity of the industrial chain is a rationality for enterprises. select. As long as the industry alliances find a clear positioning, better synergies can be formed between the various alliances.

Previously, the typical camps of low-power wide-area networks, NB-IoT and LoRa, established an international alliance organization. The LoRa Alliance was established in March 2015 and attracted more than 300 companies from all over the world in more than a year. Promoted the maturity of the industrial chain; NB-IoT Forum was established in October 2015, combined with a large number of upstream and downstream enterprises of NB-IoT to form a complete industrial chain. As a multinational alliance, these two organizations have played a huge role in promoting the global popularity of low-power wide-area networks and industrial ecology.

To the specific country, the landing of the industry requires the efforts of the country's enterprises. In 2016, the low-power wide-area network became the hottest field in China's Internet of Things industry, and various domestic alliance organizations also played a lot of roles. To sum up, the current alliance organizations in this field mainly include:

As early as December 27, 2015, more than a dozen companies engaged in low-power wide-area network services in the United Nations Internet of Things think tank initiated the establishment of the National Low-Power Wide Area Network Industry Alliance (LPWAN-A), which is domestic. The first alliance organization in this field, through this organization, provides a platform for domestic enterprises in this field to exchange technology, supply and demand, and business cooperation.

In particular, with the media and industry research platform of the IoT think tank of the Alliance Secretariat, we continue to publish a large number of LPWAN consulting, opinions, market trends, technological progress, industrial research reports, etc., which have made the Internet of Things in the Internet of Things popular with LPWAN knowledge and industry conditions. lots of work.

In January 2016, the China LoRa Application Alliance (CLAA), a technology alliance initiated by ZTE and involved in various IoT applications, aims to promote the application and development of the LoRa industry chain in China, and build multi-service sharing and low cost. , wide coverage, and operational LoRa Internet of Things.

So far, more than 50 Internet-based applications based on CLAA have been applied in smart cities, agriculture, energy, security and other fields. In particular, through a nationwide cloud-based core network and shared access, a nationwide operational virtual LoRa network can be formed.

In May 2016, the Shanghai Internet of Things Association, together with Huawei and China Unicom, initiated the establishment of the “China NB-IoT Industry Alliance” to promote the cooperation between upstream and downstream enterprises in the NB-IoT industry chain and the construction of the NB-IoT ecosystem. In less than a year, the Alliance organized a number of forums and seminars to organize experts in the field of NB-IoT, and released issues related to NB-IoT technology, standards, markets, and industry outlooks in this field. Multi-period NB-IoT topic list.

On December 16, 2016, at the 7th China Internet of Things Industry and New Smart City Annual Conference, the “Low-Power Wireless Communication Committee” was unveiled. Launched by Chengdu West Grain Network Industry Incubator and West Valley Shuguang, with the mission of building a wireless Internet ecosystem, it gathers industry resources to solve the low-power, low-cost and long-distance pain points of the Internet of Things.

On December 21, 2016, Dr. Peng and the “China LoRa IoT Industry Operation Alliance” initiated by a number of companies in the United Nations were officially established. The goal of promoting LoRa's mature LPWAN technology for large-scale commercial deployment in China means that China will become the world's largest LoRa commercial market.

In addition, the Computer Network Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences initiated the “LPWAN Industry-University-Research Alliance”, relying on the scientific research strength of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and universities, and is committed to the research and development of low-power wide-area network technologies and applications, and has cooperated with enterprises in the field of Internet of Things. Promote the development of low-power wide-area networks in domestic production and research.

There are still many companies that have initiated alliance-based organizations based on low-power wide-area networks to build an industrial ecosystem.

As a branch of the Internet of Things industry, low-power wide-area networks have not yet been applied on a large scale, and a large number of alliances have emerged, which has made many practitioners feel confused. In the author's view, in the early stage of marketization, the development of the group is very necessary, but for this group, it can be examined from two aspects: is it the rational behavior of the market subject, is there a clear positioning?

We may wish to examine the development of alliances in the field of low-power wide-area networks from these two aspects.

Friends who are familiar with the market economy must be impressed by the “invisible hand”. As early as hundreds of years ago, Adam Smith, the originator of economics, put forward the concept that resources can be allocated spontaneously through market entities. A good equilibrium state. Here, the decision-making role of the market autonomy is very important, and there is no other force to force it.

In the process of launching and operating these alliances of low-power wide-area networks, basically, all enterprises and institutions form alliances spontaneously from the perspective of marketization, without any intervention from administrative forces or other forces. After the establishment of each alliance, a large number of members joined, which is a value-oriented self-determination behavior, and many enterprises have also obtained certain benefits through the operation of the alliance. All decisions on the industry alliance were formed under the guidance of the “invisible hand” of the market.

The biggest event in the recent economics field is the debate about the usefulness or uselessness of the industrial policies of the two camp economists. Among them, the opposition put forward a lot of arguments, including many emerging industries, under the intervention of industrial policies, quickly became a state of overcapacity and developmental malformation.

However, regardless of the final outcome of the debate, the domestic low-power wide-area network has developed rapidly during the year, without administrative and industrial policy interventions, but mainly by the power of enterprise marketization. In this sense, the establishment of various industrial alliances is to try to promote the development of the industry by means of market-oriented means, which can bring more or less benefits to the enterprise. The enterprise only needs to be value-oriented. Make decisions. As the industry matures, the number and functions of future industrial alliances may change greatly, but it does not affect the initial role of industrial development.

There are inevitably some overlaps in the functions of multiple industry alliances in the same field. However, it is more important to clarify their respective core positions. This core is related to the business areas and core resources of the alliance initiators, and is also a key point for decision making when alliance members join. Although there are a large number of alliances, if they have their own clear positioning, companies can join different alliances to obtain different resources, and alliances can form synergies and cooperation.

For example, China's LoRa Application Alliance (CLAA) and China's LoRa IoT Industry Operations Alliance (CLOA) are based on LoRa-based industry alliances, while CLOA will be deployed on base stations in 200 cities where Dr. Peng has achieved network coverage. The LoRa network forms the operator of a LoRa network; CLAA works with CLOA to provide the overall products and solutions for network deployment to assist in network construction and operation.

Investigating CLAA's business model, one of the core business models is the “independent carrier model”, which provides a complete solution to support customers' networking and share the Internet of Things with CLAA. In this way, although the two alliances are all based on LoRa, a focused application, a focus on operations, and a clear positioning make the two complement each other very strongly.

In addition, there has been a lot of progress in the cooperation of various alliances. For example, the National Low-Power Wide-Area Network Industry Alliance, which is led by the Internet of Things Think Tank, has cooperated with China LoRa Application Alliance and China NB-IoT Industry Alliance in industry forums and online promotion in 2016.

In the future, all the alliances will have more cooperation on the basis of seeking common ground while reserving differences. Regardless of the changes in the number and form of future industrial alliances, as long as based on market-oriented value orientation, industry alliances will continue to play a role in low-power, wide-area and large-scale commercial boosting.