Episode 31

Saving At Scale - Brandon Dalida

Brandon Dalida, Regional Sales Director at MultiTech, talks about how large-scale LoRaWAN deployments succeed when they're designed around cost-efficiency, business alignment, and network structure.

With over two decades in telecom and IoT, Brandon brings a deeply practical perspective on what makes LoRaWAN work for enterprise—especially when budgets, security, and data costs are on the line.

  • Breaks down how LoRaWAN networks can be tailored to support different business models, comparing Capex-driven private networks with Opex-heavy cloud-based topologies
  • Explains the value of edge intelligence and why Fortune 500 companies are increasingly turning to on-site LoRaWAN deployments for privacy, scalability, and WAN data cost savings
  • Introduces MultiTech’s Conduit gateways and their BACnet/IP integration, enabling seamless LoRaWAN-to-building automation system communication for smart buildings
  • Discusses the retrofitting opportunity: how LoRaWAN can be used in older buildings like museums and courthouses where wired infrastructure is not feasible
  • Talks through the challenges of fragmented networks in multi-site deployments and how MultiTech is building tools for onboarding and orchestration to unify device management at scale
  • Shares the vision for future integration between LoRaWAN and Bluetooth Low Energy, especially for mobile onboarding, firmware updates, and device configuration
  • Highlights how different wireless technologies—LoRaWAN, LTE, BLE, NFC—can work together depending on the use case, cost, and scale requirements

Links:

Brandon on LinkedIn

Multi-Tech website

Transcript
Speaker:

Today's guest on

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MeteoScientific's

The Business of LoRaWAN is Brandon Dalida.

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Brandon is a regional sales director

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at Multi-Tech,

where he spent the last several years

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helping enterprise customers deploy

LoRaWAN and cellular networks at scale.

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With over 25 years of experience

in telecom and IoT.

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Brandon brings a business

focused Lens to wireless networking,

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translating technical solutions

into operational wins for smart buildings,

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utilities, oil and gas, and more.

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In this conversation, we get into

how Multi-Tech is making LoRaWAN more

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accessible from onboard network servers

and edge

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intelligent gateways to smart building

integrations using BACnet.

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We also talk through the real bottlenecks

in smart infrastructure,

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like fragmented networks

and the complexities

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of onboarding sensors at scale,

and how Multi-Tech is tackling those

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with API driven orchestration

and hybrid connectivity strategies.

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Brandon lays out

why LoRaWAN isn't just competing with but

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complementing cellular, Bluetooth and NFC,

and why he sees

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ubiquitous utility style LoRaWAN coverage

as the next big opportunity.

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If you're in the business of deploying

real world IoT,

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this episode will give you insight

into how LoRaWAN is evolving

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to meet enterprise demands without losing

sight of scalability or cost efficiency.

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Now, let's dig into the conversation

with Brandon Dalida.

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Brandon,

thanks a ton for coming on the show today.

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Yeah. My pleasure. Happy to be here.

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And yeah, I'm psyched

to have you from Multi-Tech.

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As a well known player in the LoRaWAN

system, LoRa Alliance, all of that.

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I wanted to focus on a bunch

of the experience that you have,

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because you've been in this in the scene

for a while.

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Let's start off

with this idea of designing

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different LoRaWAN networks

for different business models.

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Can you talk me through what that means?

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Yeah, yeah. No, no. That's great.

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So it kind of really started out

for when we joined the, as you mentioned,

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were one of the founding members

of the LoRaWAN alliance.

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And one of the first things

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that we brought to the table joining

the alliance is we said, hey,

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we want to put a LoRa network server

on the gateway

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so companies could build out

private LoRaWAN networks.

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And that's evolved over time.

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You know, today, traditionally

you have a gateway.

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It's a packet forwarder to a cloud based.

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LNS. Great for scalability

nationwide global type deployments.

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But when you have an onboard LNS,

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you know, you might have a private network

or you have a single site or whatever.

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And there's a lot of businesses

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that want to use that, or it

depends on your business model, right?

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You know, it's a it's a CapEx business

play versus an OpEx

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using a cloud based LNS.

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And then over time, that's that's evolved.

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So we can take, we’ve

got an LNS that runs on on a gateway.

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And you might have a private network.

You could add additional gateways.

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As packet forwarders pointed to that main

gateway running the LNS.

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And then another platform that we have

and doesn't really get talked a lot about.

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But we have a platform called Lens

which stands for LoRa Enterprise

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Network Services,

where we abstract the join server

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and we put that up into a cloud

based instance in AWS.

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So what that allows for is companies

that want to do edge intelligence

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at the gateway level

or at the actual on site level,

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and they want to maybe be able

to send data from the gateway directly

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through a secure network to their back

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end platform, or maybe locally to an on

premise server, for example.

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But you still need that central join

server

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for adding devices

and keys for scalability and management.

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It's really an enterprise play.

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There's a lot of, you know, fortune.

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I'll even say fortune 500 companies

that want to have that edge intelligence,

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or they want the data from there,

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from the gateway

to be sent directly to their platform.

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But when you have an onboard LNS

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you don't have that scalability

with adding, you know, keys and stuff.

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So interesting.

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And so this sounds like for companies

as you're, as you're pitching,

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this is really comes down

to kind of privacy and security.

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Privacy security,

you know, business model.

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I would also say too that a lot of times

it reduces

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bandwidth over the data

traffic over the WAN connection.

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So if you got a cellular backhaul,

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those cellular data plans,

you know, can be costly, right?

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So if we're not sending all that

everybody's traffic over that connection

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and just our data that we want to see,

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that can also do reduce

some costs as well.

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So got it.

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And how does that break down

as far as usually manufacturing

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kind of companies will like this type

and smart cities will like that type.

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Like what do you see

as far as how that plays out?

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I would say enterprise companies

that are bringing out their own

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want to build out their own networks,

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that they want to manage

their own networks themselves.

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This tends to be a business model

that they like and prefer.

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But if we got more hybrid private public

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networks and stuff like that, packet

forwarding might make more sense.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, that that lines up with kind of how

I understand the whole thing.

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Now, I know that smart buildings

are something

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that your site on smart Building

seem to be for a number of reasons,

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kind of the next big thing in LoRaWAN,

which is funny to me because like, smart

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buildings are so boring,

but at the same time, it's like

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super exciting to think that we're about

to get all these things connected in.

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Yeah. Yeah.

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Maybe we do a cool little plug

for Multi-Tech here and say,

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talk to me about the Conduit line

or what makes this thing

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special and specifically kind of useful

for smart buildings.

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Yeah. No no no no. Great.

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So, you know,

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Conduit is kind of our name for our brand

name for our LoRaWAN gateways

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over the

last year, maybe about two years ago.

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And it's still a work in progress,

but we added the ability to take low

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end data and convert

that to BACnet IP on a gateway.

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So that really brings us now

into the more integrated

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into the smart building space

where we can take,

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you know, hook into a controller and

we can now start sending LoRaWAN traffic

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into the building management system where

we're not developing that cloud platform.

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We're using the LNS on the gateway.

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And what excites me about that is

and this is the beauty of LoRaWAN,

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and I think why LoRaWAN has really scaled

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and the adoption has been

so successful is its openness, right.

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So there's over 380.

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For the last I checked, there was over

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384 companies worldwide

that were making LoRaWAN sensors.

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So as long as they make their decoders

available, right, if you go on the TTN

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things networks GitHub, I don't 80-90% of

the decoders are up there.

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We're working on being able to pull those.

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You can get any sensor

into a building management system,

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say for example Tritium’s

Niagara platform. Right.

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And you kind of go, okay,

I want a leak sensor, I want a temp

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humidity sensor, I want to do indoor

air quality people counting,

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you know, anything you could think of,

you can make a smart building, you know.

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And the other thing

and I was thinking about this

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last night

about things to talk about today.

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We talk about smart buildings.

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It's, you know.

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Yeah. New construction.

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It's really easy to run wires and stuff

for for sensors and stuff.

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But a lot of times

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you get these calls and it's like, hey,

I, I've got a courthouse,

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I've got a museum

or a lot of infrastructure

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in Europe that's, you know,

how do I modernize these building?

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Because these buildings

aren't going away. Right.

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How do we modernize these things

and make them smart?

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And LoRaWAN allows that to happen, right.

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Because of the good in-building

penetration, the ability to add sensors

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without running wires, you know,

you've got, you know, good range.

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And then obviously the tremendous

battery life that LoRaWAN provides.

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Okay.

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I mean, BACnet is the the big thing.

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And for folks who don't know,

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that was a building automation

controls is probably what BAC stands for

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I hey you know what I don't know

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off the top of my head I'm I'm gonna

I'm gonna take a, take a guess at that.

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But it's something I see

kind of repeated over and over again.

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Whether it's Alper this,

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the CEO of the LoRa Alliance

talking about it or Olivier at Actility

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saying like, hey,

this is the next big thing

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is that all these buildings

already have this built in.

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They just don't

always have the connectivity

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that they might want,

which is what LoRaWAN provides.

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What do you think

is going to be the bottleneck there?

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Are there enough people to

to kind of do this stuff?

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Or is it just like, hey,

we only have 20 engineers

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who understand this in the world

or 40 or whatever it is.

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And there's just like,

you know, a million buildings.

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There's just, are numbers

in the way there?

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I think what the bottleneck

is, is going to be,

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and we're trying to solve this bottleneck

right now.

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What I've noticed in this space is, is

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there's a lot of intelligent people

in that, in the smart building space.

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They know networking, they know TCP IP,

they know all the different protocols.

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They a lot of these master systems

integrators know how to

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develop and write code.

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So there's a tremendous amount of talent,

I think, where the

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the issue is

and what we're trying to figure out

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is a lot of

these are private networks, right.

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So you're putting a gateway

on a private network.

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They're very fragmented.

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For example, let's just say you've got

a chain of 50 gas stations, right.

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And they're going to put in LoRaWAN at all

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these stations and integrated

into their building automation system,

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their private networks. Right.

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So maybe six months or a year down

the road, they go, hey, we want to add

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these LoRaWAN sensors to the system

that already exists.

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Well, you either got to roll a truck

or you got to have VPN access, right.

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So a technician

maybe sits down at their office

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for the day and they got a VPN

and at manually add those sensors.

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Right.

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So what we're trying to solve is

how do we allow for a central pane of

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glass in that building management system

to manage and scale the network.

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And those things are being looked

at, worked on.

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But that's kind of

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I would say, the big bottleneck right now,

because systems are fragmented

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and cloud connectivity is very limited

or even forbidden.

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Yeah, in this space.

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And it's always been funny to me

as long as I've known about IoT,

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that it is filled like packed to the gills

with really smart people.

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And there's still isn't

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kind of an Apple of of IoT yet

where that's super easy to use.

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And it's all intuitive, and you don't

need to know any code like it just works.

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And it seems like a lot of

companies are working on, on that.

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You know, one of the

the most obvious things

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when you first come into in a LoRaWAN

is like, okay, I mean, onboard a sensor,

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let me type out this, you know, 16

character or whatever it is every time.

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Yeah.

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Are you guys doing anything to, to address

just making the onboarding of sensors

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gateways, whatever easier?

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Yeah. No, no, I'm glad you asked.

That's very important question.

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You know, a lot of times. Right.

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You get a you order, you go on Amazon

or you can order from my company

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order sensor. Right.

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And you get a little card

and maybe there's a QR code

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that you can scan to get the device

and the keys or

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you got to put your reading glasses on

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and, and type in those,

all those text numbers and stuff.

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And it's it's complicated.

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You know, historically,

maybe you send a CSV file or a spreadsheet

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that's got all that.

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That's not very secure, right?

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It's not really a best practice

in my opinion.

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So some of the things

that we've recently developed

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and we're piloting with some

some companies is, is the onboarding

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and orchestration of LoRaWAN sensors

and gateways.

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So for example,

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you know, we make a LoRaWAN module

that we use that OEMs might design in

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that are building their own LoRaWAN

sensors. Right.

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Let's just say we ship them

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10,000 of these modules

while during manufacturing

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what we can do is have APIs

into their lines, for example.

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So when we make a shipment,

we can send over those devices

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in those keys and automatically automate

that, load that into their own

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at the time of manufacturing,

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and then send out a notification

or whatever that this has been completed.

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So when they build that in and send

that out, all that stuff is already done.

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And these sensors magically should just go

on board and, and work, you know?

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Yeah, great.

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Great to do QR codes

and scan that stuff for single sensors.

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But was it as we scale

and we got businesses

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that are starting to deploy the stuff

in the thousands

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or tens of thousands, these things

are going to be really crucial.

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So yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Putting it one time like it

makes you feel like a competent nerd.

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Couple of times you're like, oh,

I'm really getting into in the,

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you know, this swing of this thing.

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And then when you have to do 10 or 20,

you're like,

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okay,

there's there's got to be a better way.

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And got it. 10,000.

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Yeah. Like you,

you can't do that manually.

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So there's definitely that bottleneck

that you absolutely have to solve there.

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One of the things I'm

also seeing in LoRaWAN is this big push.

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So there's this big push

to smart buildings.

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And then there's this.

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It seems like a pretty big push

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towards this idea of integration

across technologies,

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really communications technologies for the

the best fit for a customer.

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So these companies

that I think of as LoRaWAN companies,

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of course, this business or this podcast

is about the business of LoRaWAN,

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are also saying,

hey, there are great times to use LTE,

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or sometimes we use NFC or Bluetooth or

whatever it is for these different pieces.

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Can you talk about

what Multi-Tech might be doing in

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in that realm where saying, hey,

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we're going to combine NFC and LoRaWAN

in these specific applications? Yep.

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Here's what I say I go not all one

technology is the be all end all right.

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They all complement each other right.

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So when you're hanging out with

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a dinner party on Friday and like hey,

what do you do?

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What are you working on right now?

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And you mentioned this LoRaWAN. Right.

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And your wife cringes. Yeah.

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It's know.

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Yeah. We've all had it.

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There's a lot of wireless technologies

out of there.

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But we all know what cellular is.

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We all know what LTE is, 4G, 5G, etc.

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we know what Bluetooth is.

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We know what Wi-Fi is.

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I think that fourth pillar is LoRaWAN.

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And I will say

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they all complement each other

and they not all solve one problem, right?

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I would say things

that we should be looking into

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and I think that are important.

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One of the things that we do

is we work with companies that say, hey,

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we're not an IoT company,

we're not an engineering company.

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Let's develop the solution together

for us or whatever.

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And so we've done some.

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I think integrating Bluetooth into LoRaWAN

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endpoints is going to be really important.

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I haven't seen a ton of it yet.

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But you know, it's all about volumes

and costs and stuff like that.

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But when we've got Bluetooth

in the LoRaWAN endpoint

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and we've got one of these magic devices

called a smart phone, right, that we could

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do, we could onboard sensors

that way over Bluetooth, we could do

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push firmware updates

or configuration changes over Bluetooth.

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So I think that's becoming more

and more important.

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We're not there yet,

but I think that's just inevitable.

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Yeah. And possibly NFC.

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You know we've looked at that in the past.

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And and maybe that's the thing

moving forward

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I like the Bluetooth

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because you got a little bit

more better range than than the NFC.

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But NFC can be very inexpensive.

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You know

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you do a chip down tag or whatever

and it's pennies right to integrate that.

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So yeah.

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And I've got a video somewhere on YouTube

of the first time I encountered NFC.

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And it's just like me 12 minutes

trying to get my phone in the right place

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because it's it's

kind of centimeter accuracy.

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There is what counts.

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And yes, this is yeah,

I got all these comments like,

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are you a boomer you don't know how to use

I'm like a I just I think if you

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yeah if you can get the costs

obviously down you know or you know

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maybe maybe we start seeing Dealie

and LoRa integrated into the same chips

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or whatever.

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You know,

I think I think that's what that's

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that's what I see dominating over NFC.

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Possibly. But I could be wrong.

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Yeah. Yeah okay.

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So it sounds like the kind of the

big thing for you guys to is in the direct

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future is this idea of hey

you want to onboard 10,000 sensors.

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This is something that we have

this kind of inbuilt capabilities do.

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Is there anything else that you see

that you're super excited about in LoRaWAN

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over the next six months to a year

that that you guys are doing,

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or that the industry in general

is kind of going in this direction?

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I got it's going to be so cool.

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I guess the answer

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to that is maybe we're there

with Helium or whatever,

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and that's kind of a

you either onboard or you're off for sure.

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But the idea of having LoRaWAN

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as a utility almost,

and kind of ubiquitous coverage.

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So you could order LoRaWAN sensor and you

just have coverage whether you want them

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in your home or wherever you're at,

and you're not worried

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about installing and managing

and deploying gateways, it's a big deal.

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And there's the funny thing is,

I heard this amazing stat the other day

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that funnily you mentioned Helium.

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I was talking to some of the folks there

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about this roaming thing

because roaming is,

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I think, one of the next big things

in, in LoRaWAN for exactly

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the reason you mentioned

is that if you could just order a sensor

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and not worry about checking your map

to see if there's a gateway nearby,

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the sensor just works.

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That's a that's a really big deal

for Lauri. Yeah. Yep.

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Helium has an I haven't I haven't heard

anyone who has said like this is wrong.

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So I keep saying it.

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But Helium has the largest LoRaWAN

in the world right now.

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So hundred thousand gateways.

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I think it might be over

a million by now.

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I don't know. Last night

I was like 800,000 or something like that.

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So they went up to 800,000.

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And then that was during the kind of the,

the peak of the crypto craze.

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And then it's down

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now back down as people like,

oh, it's not worth to, to keep it on

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for whatever 20 bucks a month

or whatever they're making in crypto.

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But they

do have this giant worldwide network.

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And because it's LoRaWAN, it's just radios

that are listening.

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Radios don't know

not to listen to a Multi-Tech gateway

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like an the only listen

for a Helium gateway.

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So they just pick up all LoRaWAN

and all Lora like signals.

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Everything in that 902 928 range.

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And then those signals get routed

to the Helium Packet Router, HPR

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before they go to an LNS, because

it has to know kind of where to go.

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If it's if it's a Helium, it's going

to take just a second to go through it.

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But I think it's crazy

if the if the packet says like,

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hey, I'm coming from a Helium gateway,

it gets routed to the right LNS.

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If it doesn't and it's not paid for,

it just gets discarded.

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It's an unrouted packet.

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There are 5 to 7.

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This is the stat that blew my mind 5 to

:

365

:

Oh wow.

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:

So that's all of the LoRaWAN

367

:

and all the LoRa-like, you know,

radios in the world are doing that.

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:

So it's like, okay, the possibility exists

if we can get roaming down

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:

to have ubiquitous Lora coverage.

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:

So like, we're we're close. It's

just not there yet.

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:

But super exciting that

that's what you're also excited up.

372

:

Yeah. Yeah.

373

:

Well it's an asset tracking you know

and it's big.

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:

It's cold chain.

375

:

It's there's

so many so many different things right.

376

:

Yeah Amazon package

I don't know you know. Yeah.

377

:

No it's so I can go anywhere ripping.

378

:

Dude I know you're busy

crushing for for Multi-Tech.

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:

Thanks a ton for making the time

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:

to come on and share a bunch, with us

about what you guys are doing in LoRaWAN.

381

:

Thanks,

man. Awesome. Thank you Nik Appreciate it.

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:

That's it for

this episode of The Business of LoRaWAN.

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I built this for you.

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:

So whether you're a business owner,

a LoRaWAN professional, or a hobbyist,

385

:

the intent is to give you great LoRaWAN

information.

386

:

Of course,

the best information doesn't come from me.

387

:

It comes from the conversations

388

:

we have with the people building

and deploying this tech in the real world.

389

:

And that's where you come in.

390

:

LoRaWAN is a global

patchwork of talent and ideas.

391

:

And ironically,

for a globally connected network,

392

:

most of the brilliant folks

working on it are connected yet.

393

:

Help me change that.

394

:

Introduce me

to someone awesome in your network.

395

:

Someone doing meaningful work in LoRaWAN

work.

396

:

Just shoot me a name.

397

:

I'll take it from there

398

:

and get them on the show

so we can share their work with the world.

399

:

You can always find me at metsci.show.

400

:

That's M-E-T-S-C-I dot

401

:

S-H-O-W, metsci.show

402

:

If you want to support the show

in other ways, you can subscribe,

403

:

leave a review,

share it with your corner of the world.

404

:

All those are super helpful.

405

:

If you'd like to support financially,

you can go to support.metsci.show

406

:

for both one time and recurring options.

407

:

We're also open to sponsors.

408

:

If your company serves

the LoRaWAN community

409

:

and you want to reach this dedicated

audience, let's talk.

410

:

If you want to try LoRaWAN for yourself,

create a MeteoScientific account

411

:

at console.meteoscientific.com

and get your first 400 DC for free,

412

:

which is enough to run a device

sending hourly for about a year.

413

:

This show is supported

414

:

by a grant from the Helium Foundation

and produced by Gristle King Inc.

415

:

I'm Nik

Hawks. I'll see you in the next show.

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About the Podcast

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The Business of LoRaWAN
Learn From the Pros

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Nik Hawks

Incurably curious, to stormy nights and the wine-dark sea!