As part of the collaboration, designed to bring consolidation to the low power WAN (LPWAN) sector, Weightless will offer its Weightless-N standards activities into ETSI’s Low Throughput Network (LTN) initiative. This, it says, will ensure that all those interested in ultra narrowband solutions are represented in one forum.
Weightless’ CEO Professor William Webb said: “In order to reduce fragmentation and enable critical mass in the marketplace, we are bringing these two initiatives together, providing a platform around which industry can coalesce.”
Prof Webb told New Electronics: “The significance of this move is we’re trying to fix a serious block in the implementation of the IoT. If you want to connect something, you have to use a chip, but which one? You can’t put them all in; it’s too expensive and too complicated, so companies are likely to do nothing. Until we get to where there’s certainty, it’s difficult to see the anticipated growth in the IoT.”
It’s likely that, under the new arrangements, ETSI will continue to do standardisation work, while Weightless SIG will undertake complementary activities. “It’ll be similar to how the Wi-Fi Alliance works alongside IEEE802.11,” Prof Webb explained. “We will help companies to reach consensus outside of ETSI meetings.”
The SIG has also appointed Telensa to its board. “We are delighted to welcome Telensa to the burgeoning Weightless ecosystem,” said Prof Webb.
Will Gibson, CEO of Telensa, said: “We’re delighted to be extending our ETSI standards work by joining the board of Weightless. This partnership signals a growing maturity in the LPWAN market.”
ETSI’s LTN initiative is developing an LPWAN standard and this work is supported by a range of companies, including Telensa and Sigfox. Currently, only ETSI and Weightless have developed IoT specific standards for unlicensed spectrum based on UNB technology.
“There’s a lot of similarity between Weightless-N and LTN,” Prof Webb said, “so it won’t be too difficult to consolidate the approaches into something that works for everyone.
“We hope that, by the end of 2016, ETSI will have published a standard,” he concluded.
