INTERVIEW
We recently had the pleasure of catching up with Jubin Molai, LoRaWAN Ambassador Germany, LoRa Alliance & Product Manager IoT, UPLINK Network ahead of our upcoming event Connected Germany which is being held in Mainz on December 6-7 2022.
1. Can you introduce yourself and your role?
My name is Jubin and I am an enthusiast about a new connectivity standard which will be as ubiquitous in a few years as Bluethooth or WiFi is nowadays. It´s called LoRaWAN.
As the LoRaWAN Ambassador of Germany, my intention is to make LoRaWAN accessible for everyone or in fact “every thing” – since we are moving into the Internet of Things through LoRaWAN – in an easy and quick way. You can imagine that LoRaWAN is giving a voice to objects which otherwise won´t be heard. For example, a garbage can that tells you how full it is. Those objects or things will become online and form a new Internet, the Internet of Things or “IoT” in short.
2. What projects have the LoRa Alliance been working on within Germany?
The projects of the LoRa Alliance are actually the ones carried out by its members, but also non-members who use LoRaWAN as the “backbone-connectivity” in their IoT projects. Therefore, the LoRa Alliance and LoRaWAN are in a mutual relation.
LoRaWAN is the abbreviation of Long Range Wide Area Network and is a low power wireless network protocol that is supported by the LoRa Alliance which is an open, non-profit association of device makers, solution providers, system integrators and network operators, delivering interoperability needed to scale IoT across the globe.
There are many LoRaWAN projects already implemented in Germany; for instance within Smart City initiatives like the monitoring of fill levels of garbage cans or containers or the monitoring of public parking lots. Also, enterprises are interested in IoT solutions such as asset tracking which is becoming highly cost-efficient through LoRaWAN.
Nevertheless, most LoRaWAN-projects in Germany are still in a Proof-of-Concept phase and literally waiting to move forward and to scale. One of the reasons why scalability of those projects wasn’t possible in the past is reliable, redundant and nationwide LoRaWAN coverage. Luckily, this problem has been solved today through the decentralization of LoRaWAN infrastructure.
3. What have been the biggest innovations within enterprise connectivity in the German market over the last 12 months?
Most probably, the biggest innovation and most disruptive way to provide enterprise connectivity, and LoRaWAN connectivity in particular, was the introduction of a blockchain which runs on a new consensus protocol with an innovative proof, called Proof-of-Coverage, and which is less energy hungry as compared to other consensus protocols or blockchains.
It´ s the Helium blockchain which injects decentralization into an industry currently controlled by monopolies. The result is that wireless network coverage via LoRaWAN becomes a commodity, fueled by competition, available anywhere in the world, at a fraction of current costs. Nowadays, Helium is not only the first decentralized wireless network of its kind but also the largest wireless network ever built.
4.What are you most looking forward to at Connected Germany?
I am looking forward to open discussions and inspirational talks with like minded people, because I think the name of the event should be the intention of every participant as well: Connecting Germany. In my view, for a connected Germany, we should cooperate on the infrastructure level of connectivity and can compete on the use case level. Therefore, enabling connectivity through decentralization seems to be an effective way to build telecommunication networks of the future, which we all can take part in.
You can hear from Jubin and the rest of our amazing speaker line-up at this year’s Connected Germany – follow the link to secure your place!
The post Making LoRaWAN accessible for “every thing” first appeared on Total Telecom.