USA IoT Cellular Connections to Cross Half a Billion Mark by 2025, Cellular LPWAN to Contribute Nearly Half
Seoul, Hong Kong, New Delhi, Beijing, London, Buenos Aires, San Diego
10thOct 2018
AT&T will continue to lead by contributing to almost 50% of the USA total IoT cellular connection. T-Mobile’s and Sprint’s potential merger will lead them to be in 2nd spot in the USA by pushing Verizon to 3rdby 2025.
According to the latest research from Counterpoint’s IoT (Internet of Things) service, USA IoT Cellular Connections grew 21 % YoY in 1H18 and we estimate it to grow by 25% YoY by end of 2018 driven by the rollout of IoT Low Power Wireless Access Networks (LPWAN).
Commenting on the network operators’ IoT deployment strategy, Counterpoint Research Analyst, Satyajit Sinha, noted, “Initially, the big US operators such as Verizon and AT&T, opted for LTE-M as the primary cellular LPWA network as opposed to China, where NB-IoT was opted. However, in the beginning of 2018, US operator T-Mobile went live with its NB-IoT network prompting the competition to rethink their LPWA strategy and tilt towards NB-IoT adoption network alongside the complementary LTE-M network. This is great news for NB-IoT ecosystem to scale further and faster with world’s top operators and markets adopting this promising LPWA technology.”
Mr. Sinha, further added, “From a technical perspective there are major differences between LTE-M and NB-IoT, such as channel bandwidth, peak data rate and device power consumption. Moreover, LTE-M is more suitable for IoT applications which required relatively higher throughput and support voice as compare to NB-IoT. As a result, key use cases for LTE-M will include healthcare monitoring, asset tracking, pets and kids tracking applications. Whereas NB-IoT will be suitable for application requiring low power and low bandwidth such as smart meters, smart smoke detectors, smart parking, smart city and a plethora of other applications.”
Adding his perspective, Research Director, Jeff Fieldhack, noted, “Although NB-IoT has arrived late in the USA as compared to China, in the case of 5G, US operators are leading with respect to the testing and deployment schedule. As 5G will be crucial for some high bandwidth as well low latency applications such as autonomous cars, drones, HD intelligent surveillance cameras, Industrial IoT and so forth. 5G IoT cellular connections will contribute to 16% of USA IoT cellular connection by 2025”
