Chinese equipment vendor ZTE has become a member of the board of directors of the LoRa Alliance, which is promoting the worldwide development of low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) technologies using its own LoRaWAN system.

Liu Jianye, ZTE’s GM for energy and IoT innovation, will serve as its representative on the board.

Prior to joining the board, ZTE, together with 20 partners, sponsored the China LoRa Application Alliance (CLAA), which works to promote the use of LoRa technologies in industry verticals and develop LoRa standards and specifications.

In four months, CLAA has recruited more than 40 full members and many IoT companies have submitted applications to join the alliance, ZTE said.

CLAA has issued carrier-class specifications regarding numbering rules, frequency usage, extension of the MAC layer and server open interface. Based on the specifications, members have developed network solutions covering modules, nodes, base stations, network servers, application servers and security servers.

LoRa is just one technology option for the deployment of low power wide area networks. Alternatives include Sigfox, as well as RPMA technology from Ingenu. And the mobile community is rallying around NB-IoT, which is expected to be officially ratified as a standard by the 3GPP this week.

ZTE is supporting both LoRa and NB-IoT. Its LoRa statement this week said it is also “taking positive steps to fully realise the commercial use of [NB-IoT] terminal chips, networks and applications.”

Earlier this month it showcased NB-IoT technology at China Mobile’s 5G innovation laboratory.