Clearly, both technologies allow water, electricity, or gas meters to be read remotely. But if we dig a little deeper, it's clear that for this use case, being less energy-intensive is a big advantage since the transmitter (wireless sensor) that reads the water meter runs on batteries. Then there are the monthly operating costs for connectivity, which have a significant impact if we evaluate the costs over 10 years or more. Finally, the ability to penetrate basements, through concrete, metal, or glass is an important attribute for reading water meters, which are often installed in basements.

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According to an independent study published at the end of 2021 by a group of renowned universities including the University of California Berkeley, LoRaWAN is 6 times less energy intensive than LTE-M. Therefore, to have the same battery life, the LTE-M battery should have 6 times greater capacity. This is not really surprising since there is a direct link between bandwidth (amount of information that can be sent per second) and energy consumption. The bandwidth of LoRaWAN is 290 bps – 50 Kbps while that of LTE-M is 200 kbps – 1 Mbps. Other use cases requiring a larger bandwidth than reading water meters or other telemetry would then be better served by LTE-M. 

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Since LTE-M is a cellular technology, each connected meter comes with a monthly subscription for cellular connectivity that costs several times more than LoRa connectivity. In addition, this connectivity cannot be used to carry data from other sensors as each meter's cellular plan cannot be shared.

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Furthermore, since LoRaWAN is a highly secure and bidirectional protocol, it has nothing to envy from LTE-M with regard to remote configuration of the sensor if needed.

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Finally, LoRaWAN's penetration capacity and resistance to interference is far superior to that of LTE-M. This is a significant advantage, since if LTE-M connectivity is poor in a basement, there is not much to be done. On the other hand, with LoRa, you can always add an inexpensive LoRa gateway in the neighbourhood to improve coverage if needed. Needless to say, this new LoRa gateway can also be used to carry data from hundreds of other types of LoRa sensors for all sorts of applications.

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Finally, LoRaWAN is now used in almost every country in the world to read electric, water, or gas meters. Currently in France, 64% of the 60 million connected meters are on LoRa (or Sigfox), compared to only 7% on LTE-M. The same is true in a large number of industrialized countries for obvious reasons.

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When it comes to competing technologies, there are always those who push their solution by spreading falsehoods about the competing technology, so it's important to do your homework and draw your own conclusions.