The latest GSA report indicated 147 operators in 68 countries that have deployed or launched LTE-M and NB-IoT solutions.
Of those, 60 operators have opted for both NB-IoT and LTE-M. The rate has slowed as the market has saturated, especially compared with initial roll-out. In total, 176 operators in 84 countries are known to be actively investing in NB-IoT networks, up slightly from 173 in the previous update.
Of these, 132 operators in 67 countries have deployed or launched NB-IoT networks. An additional 25 are piloting, planning or deploying NB-IoT networks and a further 20 are evaluating or testing NB-IoT technology.
The report said 81 operators in 45 countries that are actively investing in LTE-M networks. Of these, 61 in 39 countries have deployed or commercially launched; 11 more are planning, deploying or piloting networks and nine operators are known to have been engaging in tests or trials.
The ecosystem of low-power wide-area network devices based on 3GPP standards is growing fast. The report said 982 devices are supporting either Cat-NB1 and -NB2 or Cat-M1. In total, 570 devices have been released supporting Cat-NB1 (including known variants) by 114 vendors, up from 551 devices in September 2023.
A total of 756 devices have been released supporting Cat-M1 (including known variants), up from 707 device models in September 2023. Cat-M1 devices are available from 157 vendors. Modules are responsible for 32 percent of these devices.
Major industry initiatives, in areas like connected and autonomous vehicles, connected or smart homes, agriculture, robotics, smart industry, smart cities and smart energy, are exploring the potential of the Internet of things (IoT). Companies are actively working on IoT use cases involving NB-IoT and LTE-MTC (LTE-M) networks, and the market has been boosted by the greater need for remote operations during the pandemic.
