VIDEO INTERVIEW: LTE-M provides “the best of all worlds”, according to Cameron Coursey, VP product development, IoT solutions at US operator AT&T, as he trumpeted the advantages of using the Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) technology over rival offerings.

Along with rival Verizon, AT&T opted to deploy 3GPP standard LTE-M for its efforts around the LPWA internet of things space, one of three licensed technologies ratified by the standards body.

The US’ second largest operator last month switched on its first site running the network in San Francisco, with a goal to make the technology available commercially on a nationwide basis throughout 2017.

3GPP’s NB-IoT technology, meanwhile, is the offering that has seen strong support in Europe and Asia in particular.

In an interview with Mobile World Live, Coursey argued you can “do a lot more things with LTE-M compared to NB-IoT.”

In fact, LTE-M is believed to be better at supporting more bandwidth-hungry services, with LTE-M typically supporting data rates of around one hundred kb/s.

Despite the 3GPP-backed standards only being ratified last June (the third technology option is EC-GSM-IoT), Coursey dismissed concerns that LTE-M, like NB-IoT and EC-GSM-IoT, is lagging behind unlicensed non-cellular LPWA offerings such as Sigfox and LoRa. He claimed there is a place for multi network support when it comes to LPWA, and told Mobile World Live he is satisfied that a 3GPP backed standard is the right choice for AT&T.

“When it comes to LPWA technology we believe 3GPP technology can give us a high level of security, and can give coverage around the globe with one consistent standard,” he said.

To hear his thoughts click here.