Operators will have opportunities to rationalise their cellular IoT portfolios, but most are several years away

Various cellular technologies address both low-bandwidth and high-bandwidth IoT use cases, often with overlapping capabilities. Operators are currently balancing numerous existing network technologies while considering investments in emerging technologies. 

Operators’ transition to new network technologies has proven challenging in the past as widespread adoption by both operators and customers is required for hardware prices to fall. The initially high prices of IoT hardware and slow network roll-outs for NB-IoT and LTE-M led to lower customer demand than operators anticipated. Operators will face similar challenges with the emergence of 5G reduced capability (RedCap) and enhanced reduced capability (eRedCap). These technologies could see 5G support most IoT applications, but we expect the migration to be gradual and only accelerate from the mid-2030s. 

We assess the outlook for these various technologies in Analysys Mason’s report, Cellular IoT network access technologies: assessment of characteristics.