Regulators need to devote sub-1GHz spectrum to the Internet of Things to ensure the long-term health of the sector, the Wireless IoT Forum has urged.
The industry body said the likes of Ofcom in the UK and the FCC in the US need to do more to solve issues such as fragmentation and interference. It said the latter is a problem because of the volume of applications using current bands.
Further difficulties are caused by how IoT traffic has to go through a limited number of base stations and are subject to the same regulatory constraints as other devices using unlicensed spectrum.
In order to power networks that comprise more than 1,000 devices per cell, the IoT Forum said these cells need to have enough power to have a range of up to five kilometres, have a balanced uplink and downlink ratio, be interference free and operate on a band that is available worldwide.
William Webb, WIoTF CEO, said: “It is clear the IoT is a key technology to boost productivity, alleviate key societal challenges, improve our working lives and to deliver growth and employment.
“For these reasons it merits a higher level of regulatory attention than many other wireless applications. We would like to see regulators dedicate bands in the range 800MHz-1000MHz to IoT applications, thus overcoming interference issues.
“Where IoT is deployed in general purpose unlicensed bands we would like to see “light licensing” approaches for base stations removing duty cycle restrictions and enabling higher power levels.”
Webb’s Weightless SIG has been working on its own narrowband IoT technology. Nwave recently deployed an IoT network in Copenhagen using tech built on the Weightless-N standard.