20  Debate: LoRaWAN vs. Cellular IoT

A Technical Trade-off Scenario

This scenario is drawn from a city-scale smart-parking deployment and is meant to be worked through as a design-decision exercise, not just read.

20.1 LoRaWAN vs Cellular IoT

Discussion Prompt

Scenario: A city wants to deploy 10,000 smart parking sensors. Each sensor reports occupancy changes (average 20 messages/day, 10 bytes each).

Debate: LoRaWAN or NB-IoT?

Key Questions:

1. What’s the 5-year total cost of ownership?
2. How does coverage differ in urban canyons?
3. What happens when technology standards evolve?
4. Who controls the infrastructure?