French municipalities scale LoRaWAN beyond pilot projects

French municipalities are expanding Internet of Things deployments beyond pilot projects, with LoRaWAN featuring prominently at the REX Connected and Sustainable Territories gathering in Paris. The event drew more than 500 participants, about half from local authorities and municipalities.

The meeting focused on how local governments are applying connected technology in day-to-day public services rather than testing isolated concepts. Its programme expanded to eight thematic tracks from six in earlier editions, covering buildings, public lighting, water and waste management, mobility, natural risks, urban planning and air quality.

That broader agenda reflected a wider shift in municipal procurement and planning, as connected networks move into essential infrastructure projects. The emphasis was on practical examples from the field, with 22 experience-sharing sessions involving municipalities of different sizes across France.

Cases included wildfire detection, on-demand rural street lighting and AI-assisted waste management. Organisers framed the event around peer exchange between public authorities and suppliers, giving councils and municipalities a chance to assess what had worked elsewhere before committing to larger-scale roll-outs.

Public sector focus

Local government representation stood out as a defining feature of the event. With around 50% of attendees coming from municipalities and other public bodies, the turnout suggested rising demand for connected infrastructure that can be deployed in a measured way and tied to clear service improvements.

Water management emerged as a leading use case in France. Smart metering and leak detection were presented as applications that can justify initial network investment, even in smaller municipalities with tighter budgets and less room for experimentation.

Once a network is in place for water services, the same infrastructure can support other local functions, including building management, lighting, waste collection and parking. That argument appears to be gaining ground with authorities seeking to spread costs across multiple services rather than fund separate systems for each one.

LoRa ecosystem

LoRa Alliance members had a visible presence on the exhibition floor. Nine members were named as exhibitors: Orange, MultiTech, Netmore, Itron, WATTECO, TEKTELIC, REQUEA, FNCCR and Kerlink.

Other companies also demonstrated products built on LoRaWAN, giving public buyers exposure to a broader supplier base. For municipalities, that breadth matters because procurement teams often weigh not only immediate project needs but also long-term flexibility, support and the risk of dependence on a single vendor.

Discussions repeatedly highlighted several local authority requirements: the option to deploy public, private or hybrid networks; the use of an open standard; local control over data; and access to a broad market of sensors, gateways and network management tools.

Data ownership is becoming a more prominent issue in French public sector technology decisions. Municipalities are under pressure to modernise services while retaining oversight of information generated by public infrastructure, particularly in utility management, transport and environmental monitoring.

Competitive positioning

LoRaWAN has gained attention in that context because it is presented as a standard that allows local authorities to avoid locking themselves into a single supplier. For buyers managing long asset lifecycles, that can be as important as a network's technical performance.

Discussion in Paris also underlined the importance of a mature supplier ecosystem. A technology with a long enough track record to support a range of certified devices and multiple network options is likely to appeal more to public bodies than one associated mainly with early-stage trials.

Semtech linked that trend to the broader direction of France's connected territory market. Olivier Beaujard, Senior Director of the LoRa Ecosystem at Semtech and Chair of the Board at the LoRa Alliance, attended the gathering and pointed to the shift in discussion from experimentation to execution.

For suppliers and network providers, that change means municipalities are no longer only asking whether connected infrastructure can work. They are increasingly asking where investment delivers measurable operational returns, how quickly projects can expand across departments, and whether systems can remain manageable over time.

The event itself has become a barometer for that shift in France, bringing together public authorities, private companies and sector organisations involved in digital and environmental transition projects. Its role now appears less about introducing new concepts and more about comparing evidence from projects already under way.

That gives technologies such as LoRaWAN an advantage when they can point to deployments spanning multiple services and local conditions. In a market shaped by budget scrutiny and service delivery demands, practical examples from municipalities may carry more weight than broad smart city strategies.

Across the sessions, connected infrastructure for water, lighting, waste and environmental monitoring showed how French municipalities are treating IoT networks as a shared layer for public services rather than a series of isolated experiments.