The LP (low power) WAN protocols are sometimes misleadingly presented as clear alternatives to cellular, when increasingly they will be deployed alongside and be seen as part of an expanding portfolio of mobile communications options. There are cases of course where LPWAN protocols will be deployed in standalone mode, in some agricultural and campus settings, but even there they will often either be provided as part of a public cellular service, or in parallel with a private 5G network. In fact two of the leading LPWAN protocol contenders will operate in licensed spectrum as part of the 5G effort to support mMTC (massive machine-type communications). These are 4G-based NB-IoT and LTE-M, and their future 5G iterations (though there is some…