The Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) space is really heating up.

Just in the last few weeks we have seen some exciting announcements, such as the Mobile IoT Initiative from GSM Association (GSMA) , and a new LPWAN public network named the Machine Network from Ingenu (formerly On-Ramp).

As exciting as these announcements are, I do not believe they are positive developments for the LPWAN sector. There are too many competing technologies leading to choice overload and confusion.

There is clearly a gap in the industry today that needs to be filled by LPWAN technologies. The key characteristics defining LPWAN technology are as follows:

There are many technologies such as LoRa Alliance , Sigfox , Weightless-N and RPMA from Ingenu racing to establish themselves. Each of these network technologies share the characteristics stated above. We can argue which technology is superior, but boiled down, they all effectively solve the same problem. They are all well suited for connecting low-cost, remote wireless sensors to fuel the growth of IoT devices. Making the correct choice is difficult -- and a gamble at this stage.

The solutions mentioned above exist today, operate in unlicensed spectrum bands and are incompatible with each other. There is no clear winner when you look at the competing solutions. Just trying to figure out the differences between the solutions is complex and time consuming. Carriers are confused. OEMs are confused. Integrators are confused.

3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has been working hard to standardize their own LPWAN solutions. Not surprisingly, there are several competing solutions being proposed by the usual suspects. What is surprising is that three separate solutions appear to be emerging in the standards, namely EC-GSM, NB-CIOT and LTE-M.

I believe 3GPP will fail itself and the community if it decides to offer multiple solutions. It really needs one strong solution that can handle the majority of IoT use cases for the next 30 years, similar to what GSM has done for voice. In order to take advantage of the economies of scale and meet the cost goals of LPWAN, carriers need just one IoT network, and OEMs need to be able to produce one product for the entire world.

The LPWAN sector is facing a serious problem with choice overload and confusion. I believe that this will cause many people to refrain from or at least delay making a choice. In the short term, the brave early adopters will place their bets, leading to a fragmented market. OEMs will be left scrambling to make products for the various network options, leading to higher product costs. In the long term, there needs to be consolidation to reduce the number of options. While it's not too late to develop an industry standard or at least a smaller set of standards, these present-day concerns are very real.

— Ryan Hickey, co-founder and CEO, eleven-x