The low power WAN (LPWAN) field has become a major wireless communications sector on the back of the IoT, especially for field applications such as smart metering and environmental monitoring. But it has been shrouded in confusion over terminology and protocols, especially as we enter the 5G era, as we have seen from various recent forecasts for the sector. Confusion is caused by LPWAN being portrayed as an alternative or even competitor to cellular when two of the four main wireless communication protocols in the sector are under the 5G stable. Those protocols are NB-IoT and LTE-M, both 4G-based and operating in licensed spectrum. The two primary non-cellular LPWAN protocols are LoRaWAN and Sigfox, operating in unlicensed spectrum. One recent…