GSMA has announced that mobile IoT or low power wide area (LPWA) networks are now available across the globe in licenced spectrum in 49 markets.
This move follows 93 launches by 50 different mobile operators across both LTE-M and NB-IoT and the coverage is now likely to reach nearly 93% of the total IoT markets by Q2-2019. The GSMA Intelligence forecast suggests that there will be 3.5 billion cellular IoT connections by 2025, including 1.9 billion licensed LPWA connections.
There have been 68 NB-IoTs launched in 45 markets and 25 LTE-M networks launched in 19 markets till date. These are supported by 47 Open Labs that allow organisations to test their products and services prior to launch.
In the fourth quarter of 2018, Europe witnessed launch of Altice (Portugal; NB-IoT), Orange, (France and Romania; LTE-M), Telenor Group (Norway; NB-IoT, LTE-M), Telia (Estonia; NB-IoT), SFR (France; NB-IoT), Swisscom (Switzerland; NB-IoT, LTE-M) and Vodafone (Malta; NB-IoT). In the same quarter, Asia saw Grameenphone (Bangladesh; NB-IoT), Chungwa (Taiwan; LTE-M), Telkomsel (Indonesia; NB-IoT) and Megafon and MTS (Russia; NB-IoT).
Verizon and Spark also launched LTE-M in North America and New Zealand respectively, while STC launched NB-IoT in Saudi Arabia and Telefonica launhed LTE-M in Argentina.
Previous data released by GSMA Intelligence in May suggested that the global IoT market will be worth £0.84 trillion in revenue by 2025 due to the market shift from connectivity to platforms, applications and services. It was predicted that there will be more than 25 billion IoT connections, both cellular and non-cellular, by 2025.
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