Lora is a wireless protocol for the Internet of Things ! It broadcast information on free-to-use frequencies and consume nearly nothing (a device could be used for 5 years on normal batteries).
It allows to place everywhere small devices that will send packets to gateways that will themself submit it to one or more centralized database.
On this page you can test the communication and send a message to a Lora node @ EPFL that will broadcast it wirelessly. A gateway in Lausanne (4km away) should catch this packet and send it to the things network database. Just refresh the node logs and check if your message arrived.