LoRa Alliance announces 2021 Contribution Award Winners

 The awards recognise individuals and companies for their leadership, service, and contributions to the LoRa Alliance over the past year.

“Every year I am energised by reviewing our members’ contributions to advancing the LoRaWAN standard. This year is no exception,” said Donna Moore, CEO and Chairwoman of the LoRa Alliance. “2021 was truly a breakthrough year for LoRaWAN: It was accepted as a standard by ITU-T, became the leader for LPWAN networking, and led in global deployments at scale. These achievements are only possible thanks to the support and hard work of our members, and I am proud to celebrate them today.”

This year’s full list of winners:

Lifetime Achievement Award

• Olivier Beaujard: Senior Director, LoRa Ecosystem, Semtech; Secretary and Member of the LoRa Alliance Board of Directors; Chair of the Regulatory and Roadmap Workgroups, LoRa Alliance
• Olivier Hersent: Founder & CTO, Actility; Member of the LoRa Alliance Board of Directors

Corporate Award

• Everynet BV was recognised for its work to increase the footprint of LoRaWAN across the world, making massive IoT more accessible in many countries, including Indonesia, Italy, UK, Ireland, Spain, Brazil and the United States, among others, and advancing LoRaWAN roaming. Within the LoRa Alliance, Everynet contributed to the development of DLMS over LoRaWAN, participates actively in events, and is engaged in multiple LoRa Alliance Workgroups and Task Forces.

Leadership Award

• Sandoche Balakrichenan: Head of R&D Partnerships, Afnic; Chair of the Academia Workgroup, LoRa Alliance
• Tony Tilbrook: CTO/COO, National Narrowband Network Communications (NNNCo); Asia-Pacific Regional Vice Chair and Chair of the Smart Cities Workgroup, LoRa Alliance

Distinguished Service Award

• Jeanette Aaron: Senior Director for Client Strategy at MachineQ, a Comcast Company; Member of the LoRa Alliance Board of Directors
• Rémi Demerlé: Alliance Partnerships and Marketing Director for LoRa Ecosystem, Semtech; Chair of the Smart Utilities Workgroup and Chair of the IPv6 over LoRaWAN Task Force, LoRa Alliance
• Rémi Lorrain: Global LoRaWAN Networks Director, Semtech; Network Operator Forum Chair and EMEA Regional Vice Chair, LoRa Alliance
• Constantine Nfor: Engineer, Bureau Veritas Consumer Products Services, Inc.
• Ramez Soss: Senior RF Expert and Wireless Product Manager, Actility

Team Award

• Actility and Arad Technologies, who worked together over three years to get LoRaWAN approved by the Ministry of Communication in Israel
• Standards Development Organisation (SDO) Task Force Team, which secured LoRaWAN’s acceptance as an international standard by ITU
• Olivier Beaujard, Semtech, lead; Olivier Dubuisson, Orange; Dave Kjendal, Senet; Olivier Seller, Semtech; Alper Yegin, Actility

Innovation Award

• Acklio, for pioneering SCHC compression technology and its support of the LoRa Alliance’s work to standardise LoRaWAN over internet protocol, significantly expanding the market for LoRaWAN
• Actility, for leading the development of LoRaWAN roaming and being the first network vendor to implement, interoperate, and commercially deploy this feature
• In 2021, Senet and Helium collaborated to deliver the first and most densely deployed commercial nationwide LoRaWAN network in the United States, providing coverage to more than 2,000 cities, at key shipping ports, across major logistics corridors, and in agricultural areas throughout the US.
• Thingy IoT, for positioning LoRaWAN in remote research and smart agriculture, including deployment of a distributed smoke and environmental monitoring network covering the US West Coast in 2021

Lifetime Achievement award winners

Olivier Beaujard:

“Recognising over five years of dedication of growing the LPWAN ecosystem, I feel honoured to receive this prestigious award. Through Semtech’s joint cooperation with LoRa Alliance, one of the fastest-growing technology alliances driving the LoRaWAN standard as the leading open global standard for the Internet of Things, we are providing more choices for our customers,” said Beaujard. “I am proud to be associated with the LoRa Alliance and to continue strengthening the ecosystem with the LoRaWAN standard and Semtech’s LoRa technology.”

Olivier Hersent:

“My gratitude goes to all the members of the Alliance who contribute every day to this dream of pervasive connectivity,” said Hersent. “It has been an amazing journey from our early days brainstorming sessions with Nicolas Sornin and Thorsten Kramp eight years ago… all the way to the LoRaWAN World Expo today with all of the top industry players and a booming ecosystem. I think our key innovation has been to enable seamless collaboration both horizontally with roaming between private and public networks, and vertically with end-to-end secure activation of devices. Preserving this collaborative spirit across the ecosystem is Actility’s priority moving forward.”

Corporate Award Winner

Everynet:

“The Everynet team is honoured to receive the Corporate Award,” stated Lawrence Latham, Everynet CEO. “We share the LoRa Alliance’s commitment to the growth and promotion of LoRaWAN globally and are proud that the expansion of our national networks around the world is playing a key role in that effort. Everynet has been an active member of the LoRa Alliance since its inception, and we look forward to continuing our support of the Alliance in the years to come.”