Going city-wide & want control?
LoRaWAN. Own the network, pay no per-meter fees, and get a decade of battery life. Ideal once you pass a few hundred devices in an area.
Connectivity explained
Five radios, one question: what's the difference?
Every metering and monitoring project starts with one question: how does the device get its data to you? There is no single "best" radio – each technology trades range, battery life, cost and mobility differently. Here's a plain-English comparison, and how to pick.
LoRaWANlong range · low power
NB-IoTdeep indoor · cellular
LTE-Mmobile · higher data
Wireless M-Busshort range · battery
Wired M-Buscabled · legacy meters
Side by side
Five connectivity technologies, compared
The first three are wireless networks for getting data from the field; the last two are the metering bus standards you'll meet inside buildings. Most real deployments mix several - which is exactly what Divako is built to run.
| Unlicensed radio LoRaWAN Read more: LoRaWAN → Long-range, low-power | Licensed cellular NB-IoT Read more: NB-IoT → Operator network | Licensed cellular LTE-M Operator network | Unlicensed radio Wireless M-Bus Utility metering radio | Wired bus M-Bus Wired meter bus | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spectrum | Unlicensed sub-GHz (868 MHz in EU) | Licensed cellular (operator) | Licensed cellular (operator) | Unlicensed sub-GHz (868 MHz in EU) | None – physical two-wire cable (EN 13757) |
| Typical range | 2–15 km, deep indoor penetration | Cellular cell; excellent deep-indoor reach | Cellular cell; good indoor reach | Tens to a few hundred metres | Up to ~1 km of cable run |
| Battery life | Very long – 10–15 years | Long – 10+ years (stationary) | Shorter – higher power draw | Very long – 10–15 years | None needed – powered over the bus |
| Data rate | Low (0.3–50 kbps) | Low (~30–250 kbps) | Medium (~1 Mbps), low latency | Low – short metering frames | Low-medium, very reliable |
| Mobility | Static / nomadic | Static – no cell handover | Full mobility & handover | Static (walk-by, drive-by or fixed) | Static – physically wired |
| Who runs the network | You do – your gateways, or a public LoRaWAN network | Mobile operator (SIM / eSIM) | Mobile operator (SIM / eSIM) | You do – your collectors, gateways or drive-by | You do – wired bus + level converter |
| Cost model | Hardware capex, no per-device fee | Per-SIM data subscription | Per-SIM data subscription | Hardware capex, no per-device fee | Cabling capex, no recurring fee |
| Best for | Dense, city-wide metering & sensors where you want to own the network | Single, scattered meters where cellular coverage beats building a network | Moving assets, or where you need more bandwidth / lower latency | EU utility metering (water, heat, gas) with walk-by & drive-by | In-building meter clusters where cabling already exists |
Scroll the table sideways to see every column →
How to choose
It's rarely one technology – it's the right mix
A few rules of thumb our deployment teams use on real rollouts.
A handful of meters, spread out?
NB-IoT. Let the mobile operator carry coverage instead of building gateways. Great deep-indoor reach for basements and pits.
Assets that move, or need more data?
LTE-M. Handles mobility and handover, higher throughput and lower latency – at the cost of more power draw.
Classic utility metering?
Wireless M-Bus for radio walk-by and drive-by; wired M-Bus where cabling already runs between meters in a building.
Where Divako fits
Run every one of these from a single platform
You don't have to standardise on one radio – and you shouldn't. Divako ingests LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, LTE-M, Wireless M-Bus and wired M-Bus through one device library and one data pipeline, so coverage decisions stay an engineering choice, not a vendor lock-in.
Same console, same parsers, same alarms, same billing exports – whichever technology the meter in the field happens to speak.
- One vendor-neutral device library across all five
- Mix protocols in a single rollout without extra tooling
- Gateway health, RSSI and coverage gaps as alerts
- Normalised data straight into billing, ERP or SCADA
Go deeper
Technical deep dives in our knowledge base
This page is the overview. For protocol internals, device profiles and configuration, head to the Divako documentation.
LoRaWAN →
Architecture, device classes and Divako device profiles.
NB-IoT & LTE-M →
How the cellular LPWAN technologies are provisioned and used.
Wireless M-Bus →
The EN 13757 metering radio standard, modes and frames.
All connectivity docs →
Modbus, transport protocols, security and the full reference.