Any way you look at it, a profitable nationwide narrowband internet of things network requires scale: lots of scale. One recent analysis by Mobile Experts suggests that any such network, whether a standalone LoRa network or an overlay NB-IoT network running on 4G LTE, will reach operating breakeven between five and 10 million accounts, in the best of cases, where an overlay network is possible.
If not, a greenfield narrowband IoT network might not break even on an operating basis until about 20 million accounts are obtained.
The biggest issue is funding the client devices. If the end user will pay $15 to $20 (€13.08 – €17.43) for the device, the business case works much better. If the operator needs to give away devices to get the service account, it’s difficult to make profits, Mobile Experts says.
At scale, with perhaps 50 million accounts, a narrowband IoT network can be quite profitable.
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