LoRaWAN vs NB-IoT: which network for your meters?

LoRaWAN: your network, your coverage

LoRaWAN runs on unlicensed sub-GHz spectrum (868 MHz in Europe). You install the gateways – or use a public LoRaWAN network where one exists – and from then on the network is yours: no SIM cards, no per-device subscription, hardware capex and that’s it. A single well-placed gateway covers from a couple of kilometres in dense city fabric to over ten in open terrain, and meter batteries routinely last 10–15 years.

The defining property is control. If a cellar full of meters has weak signal, you fix it yourself by adding or moving a gateway – today, not when an operator’s rollout plan gets around to it. The economics follow density: once a few hundred devices share an area, the cost per meter of owning the network drops below almost any alternative.

NB-IoT: the operator carries the coverage

NB-IoT is a cellular technology on licensed spectrum. Every meter gets a SIM or eSIM, and the mobile operator’s network does the carrying – there is nothing to build. Its deep-indoor propagation is excellent, which is why it shines exactly where metering is hardest: basements, pits and chambers. Battery life is long for stationary devices, and a rollout can start the day the meters arrive.

The trade-offs mirror the strengths. Costs are a per-SIM subscription forever, which is unbeatable for a handful of scattered meters and adds up across tens of thousands. And coverage is the operator’s decision, not yours: where a pit has no signal, you wait or work around it – you cannot hang a gateway. The history of 2G and 3G sunsets is also a reminder that an operator’s technology roadmap is part of what you are buying.

The comparison that actually matters

For metering, most spec-sheet differences are noise – both technologies move a few small messages a day with ease. Four differences decide real projects:

• Coverage control: LoRaWAN problems are fixed with a ladder and a gateway; NB-IoT problems are fixed by the operator, eventually.
• Cost shape: LoRaWAN is capex up front and near-zero per device; NB-IoT is zero up front and a subscription per device, per month, for the life of the meter.
• Density economics: hundreds of devices in one area favour LoRaWAN; single meters scattered across a region favour NB-IoT.
• Deep-indoor reach: NB-IoT wins the worst basements and pits by design; LoRaWAN often gets there too, but it may take gateway placement work.

The honest answer: mix them

Real networks are not uniform, so the right answer is rarely one technology. The pattern we see across rollouts is a deliberate split: LoRaWAN for the dense core where the density economics work, NB-IoT for the scattered edge cases, and walk-by or drive-by collection for the meters no network reaches economically. Asker municipality runs more than 20,000 meters as a LoRaWAN and wM-Bus hybrid on exactly this logic – technology chosen per area, not per organisation.

The precondition for deciding per area is a platform that does not care. In Divako, LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, wM-Bus and drive-by readings land in the same device library, the same data model and the same billing export – so the network choice stays an engineering decision you can revisit, meter fleet by meter fleet, instead of a commitment made once for everything. The full side-by-side of all five connectivity technologies is on our connectivity comparison page.

Four questions before you choose

1. Where do your meters cluster, and where do they scatter? Draw it on a map before comparing price lists.
2. Which of your meters sit in the worst radio locations – and has anyone measured actual signal there?
3. Which cost shape fits your budget: capex you own, or a per-device subscription that follows the fleet?
4. If the answer changes in five years, can your platform carry both technologies at once?

If the last answer is yes, the choice stops being scary – it becomes tuning.