The problem is two-fold. First, LoRa is a spread spectrum technology that also has a problem with collisions. Spread spectrum is where the signal bandwidth of your transmission is higher than the information bandwidth, meaning your transmission's spectral efficiency is terrible. But usually spread spectrum systems are designed such that multiple transmissions can occur at the same time without colliding, so the network spectral efficiency is just as good as a narrowband system. But LoRa is a spread spectrum technology that still suffers from collisions, so the network spectral efficiency is really bad.
Second, LoRaWAN uses an ALOHA medium access scheme, which also suffers from poor network spectral efficiency compared to basically every other medium access scheme out there. So these two things combined mean that a LoRaWAN network probably won't be able to handle much traffic.
Almost all of the media I see about LoRa and LoRaWAN talk about the great range, which is really good, but then gloss over the network performance. So in my opinion LoRa is a bit too hyped at the moment. I also think that when LoRa came out, it was the only PHY that bothered to go down to really low bit-rates, and then the range basically comes from the Shannonn-Hartley theorem. People think that LoRa gets its range from some fancy signal processing tricks or whatever, but I think it's just the fact that they bothered to drop the bit-rate very low. That's basically what SigFox is doing as well, but they're using a more typical narrowband PHY and so probably won't suffer from the same network capacity problems.
Second, LoRaWAN uses an ALOHA medium access scheme, which also suffers from poor network spectral efficiency compared to basically every other medium access scheme out there. So these two things combined mean that a LoRaWAN network probably won't be able to handle much traffic.
Almost all of the media I see about LoRa and LoRaWAN talk about the great range, which is really good, but then gloss over the network performance. So in my opinion LoRa is a bit too hyped at the moment. I also think that when LoRa came out, it was the only PHY that bothered to go down to really low bit-rates, and then the range basically comes from the Shannonn-Hartley theorem. People think that LoRa gets its range from some fancy signal processing tricks or whatever, but I think it's just the fact that they bothered to drop the bit-rate very low. That's basically what SigFox is doing as well, but they're using a more typical narrowband PHY and so probably won't suffer from the same network capacity problems.