All LPWA technologies offer long battery life, coverage benefits, and lower costs.  However with LTE-M being an evolution of LTE, it offers many advantages over the unlicensed competitors. 

They include: 

  • Carrier-grade security: LTE-M has the advantage of proven SIM security and is managed to avoid interference from other wireless networks and devices 
  • Scalability: LTE-M has nationwide coverage at launch, unlicensed vendors have to deploy market by market, building new network infrastructure.  It will take years to get equivalent coverage, if they ever do. 
  • Mobility: LTE-M tower handoff enables continuous connection to devices that may be in motion over several miles 
  • Voice: None of the unlicensed technologies can support any voice service.  LTE-M has roadmap to support VoLTE for alarm panels or similar uses