Chinese Internet giant Tencent has joined the LoRa Alliance, a move intended to accelerate development of the low power wide area (LPWA) technology.

Tencent, a technology conglomerate that owns various internet-related subsidiaries, said in a statement it has invested significantly in technology and applications for LoRaWAN, and its participation in the LoRa Alliance will help to further develop the ecosystem.

The LoRA Alliance is a non-profit association, with more than 500 member companies including major operators such as Orange, STC, SoftBank and SK Telecom, dedicated to advancing LoRaWAN technology.

LoRaWAN, which uses unlicensed spectrum, is a LPWA technology for internet of things connections and is another option to three 3GPP-backed licensed cellular LPWA technologies: NB-IoT, EC-GSM-IoT and LTE-M.

In a statement, Huixing Wang, VP of Tencent Cloud, said LoRaWAN had seen rapid growth, and the technology was “highly complementary to NB-IoT in the LPWA market”.

The company plans to build a LoRaWAN network in Shenzhen with local partners.

Donna Moore, CEO and chairwoman of the LoRa Alliance, added that projections for China’s IoT market “are significant”, and LoRa technology was well positioned to cope with demand.

However, the technology trails NB-IoT and LTE-M in the region, with the country’s three major operators having backed the cellular LPWA technologies for commercial rollout of low-power IoT services.

Tencent announced its membership at this week’s China International Internet of Things exhibition (IOTE) held in Shenzhen.