Will LTE-M Be a Big IoT Revenue Contributor?

It always is dangerous to make longer-term predictions based on where technologies or service providers are at the moment. The reason is simply that capabilities can change rapidly, even unexpectedly.

Supporters of specialized Internet of Things networks, for example, argue that mobile networks will not be able to match the specialized networks, where it comes to cost or power performance.

Some believe mobile networks will generate as much as $67 billion in M2M revenue by 2021, for example.

Verizon, for example, recently announced it was launching LTE-M.

That particular standard is optimized for IoT applications. LTE-M has a little higher data rate than NB-LTE-M and NB-IoT, but it is able to transmit fairly large chunks of data. Thus, it can be used for applications such as tracking objects, wearables, energy management, utility metering, and city infrastructure.

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