The LoRa Alliance has announced appointing Alper Yegin as CEO and Olivier Beaujard as Board Chair, strengthening the Alliance’s leadership as the LoRaWAN standard enters into a phase of rapid global deployments.
Looking back at the last nine years, the Alliance has marked two major development phases: the first being a startup phase focused on developing the specification and forming the organisation; the second being building out the Alliance’s structure and maturity.
The Alliance has now entered into its third phase as LoRaWAN moves into hyperscaling and bringing in new leadership to support this new phase of development.
“As we conducted our search, we looked for a leader with the skills and experience to guide the Alliance as LoRaWAN hyperscaling accelerates,” said Rich Sanders from ZENNER, on behalf of the search committee. “Alper stood out among the candidates due to his strong contributions to the development of LoRaWAN technology and deep knowledge of the market and customer requirements. Alper has been a key driver of LoRaWAN’s success, including eight years as Chair of the Technical Committee and six years as Alliance Vice Chair, in addition to 25 years of experience with wireless communication standards and alliance leadership, including the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), and the Zigbee Alliance. The Board is confident that Alper has the vision and leadership to guide the Alliance through this period of rapid growth as Massive IoT takes off.”
“Through my position at Actility, where I was intimately involved in LoRaWAN technology and new product development, marketing, business development and hands-on deployment support—and my active leadership role in the Alliance over the past eight years—I am ready to embrace the challenges and opportunities facing us as we enter this new phase,” said Yegin. “I firmly believe that LoRaWAN is the strongest LPWAN technology in the market––and the only one that is truly able to support Massive IoT today. The standard’s maturity, advanced and diverse feature set, comprehensive certification program and tremendous global ecosystem differentiate LoRaWAN from other technologies. I look forward to collaborating with Olivier in his new role as Chair as well as the full Board of Directors to maintain LoRaWAN’s position as the leading LPWAN technology.”
The Alliance announced it is separating the CEO and Board Chair roles – the CEO will be responsible for providing strategic leadership and guiding its day-to-day operations while the Board Chair and Board of Directors will bring oversight and governance. Semtech’s Olivier Beaujard has been elected to serve as Board Chair for the first one-year term.
“I feel honoured to become Board Chair of the LoRa Alliance, and I am eager to closely collaborate with Alper to bring the LoRa Alliance and its strong ecosystem to the next level,” commented Beaujard.
Bird’s Ahmed Kasttet has also joined the Board of Directors, bringing 25 years of experience operating radio networks to its parent company, Veolia, enabling the operation of one of the largest LoRaWAN water metering deployment.
“The LoRaWAN market is significant and strong growth is expected for unlicensed spectrum technologies,” said Kasttet. “Joining the Board is a tremendous opportunity to share my expertise in smart metering––the fastest-growing sector for LoRaWAN deployments. It also offers me the opportunity to increase representation of end-device manufacturers and utilities, as well as bring the voice of end-customers to the Alliance’s leadership.”
“The Board of Directors looks forward to Ahmed’s contributions to the Alliance at the Board level, as he represents a critical sector for LoRaWAN deployments. Birdz’s deployments and successes serve as a gold standard use case, and their success has helped to accelerate LoRaWAN adoption. His familiarity with and contributions to the standard, metering deployments and the utilities market will bring an invaluable perspective to our work,” concluded Yegin.
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