LoRa Alliance Announces New Board Members from Verizon, Helium Foundation

LoRa Alliance®, the global association of companies backing the open LoRaWAN® standard for internet of things (IoT) low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs), has announced that Alex Khorram, Sr. Director, 5G Product, Verizon Business, and Joey Hiller, Senior Technical Director at the Helium Foundation, have joined its board of directors.

Leaders in their respective markets, both new board members bring deep backgrounds in networking and a strong commitment to the LoRaWAN standard. The Alliance also announced that Stefano Landi has been elected the new board representative from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and STMicroelectronics’ Anicet Giaimo has been re-elected for a new term. This renewed commitment from these valuable board members is indicative of LoRaWAN’s continued strength in the market.

“One of LoRaWAN’s strengths since its initial development is its unsurpassed network flexibility among LPWAN technologies, which is driving strong growth across all network types,” said Donna Moore, CEO and Chairwoman of the LoRa Alliance. “The ability to deploy LoRaWAN solutions over public, private, satellite, community or hybrid networks is a key differentiator that is critical for massive IoT. Given the huge variety of IoT solutions and the diversity of end-user and end-market requirements, all network types are critical to give solution developers ultimate control as they scale their deployments. I am very excited to welcome Alex and Joey to the board of directors; their extensive experience with building private and community LoRaWAN networks will be invaluable as the LoRa Alliance continues to advance the standard to fulfill the promise of IoT.”

“The governance of the LoRaWAN protocol via the Alliance and global acceptance of the technology drove the decision to join the board,” said Khorram. “We recognize that LoRaWAN supports many potential use cases we seek to deploy, and we are actively pursuing innovative uses of the technology for private deployments. We look forward to collaborating with the LoRa Alliance membership to expand and accelerate LoRaWAN deployments globally.”

“Close alignment with the LoRa Alliance allows us to collaborate on public education and work with other members on ecosystem initiatives that demonstrate the value of the LoRaWAN standard,” said Hiller. “Helium’s community-based model has enabled connectivity in areas where other networks may not have been deployed, providing a LoRaWAN network with over 300K active gateways in 125 countries, covering over 60% of the population in North America and more than 50% of the population in Europe – with distinct density in urban areas. It complements existing networks and enables continuous, global LoRaWAN coverage for applications across asset tracking, smart cities and scientific research, among other use cases. We look forward to bringing the perspective of a global LoRaWAN community of builders, innovators and entrepreneurs to the board as we work to achieve ubiquitous connectivity for all.”

The new members round out the board’s strong background in networking types and technologies. They join representatives from public network operators Actility and Netmore; private network operator ZENNER; as well as satellite networking provider EchoStar Mobile. These board-level organizations have been critical to the development of the standard and providing the infrastructure that has enabled LoRaWAN’s rapid growth alongside our full global
membership.

“Thanks to being low-cost and based on open standards and ecosystem, LoRaWAN technology has been leveraged in all possible types of settings: public, private and community networks, deployed both terrestrially and also in space. In Actility, we have been not only supporting all these deployment cases but also nurturing collaboration among them through roaming. LoRaWAN emerged as a source of innovation in connectivity, and we have been a proud
contributor to this development,” said Alper Yegin, CTO of Actility and Vice-Chair of the LoRa Alliance.

“Supporting multiple network delivery options is the only way to meet the massive market opportunity IoT represents, and it gives customers the confidence that their use cases can be addressed with success. The work of the LoRa Alliance to support choice and flexibility in network delivery has been instrumental in driving adoption, and it is aligned well with Netmore’s approach to solving a diverse set of customer needs with predictable and cost-effective LoRaWAN network services,” said Ove Anebygd, CEO of Netmore Group AB.