Synopsis:
Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) has reached critical mass with announced deployment plans growing exponentially. Last year, the NB-IoT market was driven by a handful of operators, primarily in Asia and Europe. Today, there are dozens of network operators with NB-IoT networks or plans including in the U.S. where Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile are fast tracking their NB-IoT development. By the end of 2018, most of the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific will be covered by at least one NB-IoT network.
Despite the early lead by unlicensed Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networking technologies such as LoRa® and Sigfox, the NB-IoT ecosystem is rapidly over taking them. Dual mode options have driven much of the initial NB-IoT market where both LTE-M-- a higher bandwidth option that supports voice and mobility-- and NB-IoT protocols are integrated into the same chipset. Lower chip costs, better performance and a roadmap that includes over-the air-updates, voice and mobility will ensure that NB-IoT overtakes LTE-M in the near term and Sigfox and LoRa within the next five years.
Our interviews and reviews of hundreds of LPWA network operator announcements found that NB-IoT makes up about 40% of the these. The pace of activity has accelerated over the past year and based on the high rate of news and announcement over the past six months, the NB-IoT activity level will increase by 18X over the past two years.
Smart city applications such as metering, streetlight monitoring, waste management and parking solutions make up 80% of the announced NB-IoT applications to date. However, the number of NB-IoT applications is growing rapidly including solutions for traffic and waste management, healthcare, smart buildings, retail and wearables such as health monitors and smartwatches that will increasingly compete with short range wireless technologies such as Bluetooth and Zigbee.
Our analysis of nearly 100 LPWA network operators found that 1 in 4 are planning/developing NB-IoT networks today including many top tier mobile operators. Over half of the NB-IoT network operators today are from the Asia Pacific region. A few examples of NB-IoT network operators with varying stages of network rollouts include China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom and its subsidiary T-Mobile, KDDI, NTT Docomo, Singtel, SoftBank, Sprint, Telecom Italy, Telefónica, Telia, Telkomsel, Verizon and Vodafone.
By 2025, there will be 1.3 billion LPWA connections worldwide and NB-IoT will make up over half by this time up from <5% in 2017.
In this report we analyze the market opportunity, competitive threats and status of NB-IoT network rollouts and commercial deployments, based on 250 interviews by phone and online surveys as well as an exhaustive review of the NB-IoT value system. It includes market size forecasts (2016-2022) for connected devices, annual unit shipments and breakdowns by market, application, technology, geography and equipment/services; the results from several surveys; an in-depth technology evaluation that compares NB-IoT to LoRaWAN™ and other LPWA technologies; and an in-depth analysis of the growing NB-IoT ecosystem.
*The LoRa® Mark is a trademark of Semtech Corporation or its subsidiaries.
*LoRa Alliance™ and LoRaWAN™ are marks used under license from the LoRa Alliance.
Table of Contents
1. Executive Summary2. Report Scope & Methodology
Executive Summary
Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) has reached critical mass with announced deployment plans growing exponentially. Last year, the NB IoT market was driven by a handful of operators, primarily in Asia and Europe. Today, U.S. operators Verizon, Sprint and TMobile are fast tracking their NB-IoT development. By the end of 2018, most of the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific will be covered by at least one NB IoT network.
Despite the early lead by unlicensed Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networking technologies such as LoRa® and Sigfox, the NB IoT ecosystem is rapidly over taking them. Dual mode options have driven much of the initial NB IoT market where both LTE-M, a higher bandwidth option that support voice and mobility and NB-IoT protocols are integrated into the same chipset. Lower chip costs, better performance and a roadmap that includes over the air updates, voice and mobility will ensure that NB-IoT overtakes LTE-M in the near term and Sigfox and LoRa over the next five years.
Metering, streetlight monitoring and parking management make up 80% of the announced NB-IoT applications to date. However, the number of NB IoT applications is growing rapidly including solutions for traffic and waste management, healthcare, smart buildings, retail and wearables such as health monitors and smartwatches that will increasingly compete with short range wireless technologies such as Bluetooth and Zigbee.
By 2025, there will be 1.3 billion LPWA connections worldwide and NB-IoT will make up over half by this time up from <5% in 2017.
These numbers are predicated on overcoming the following current NB-IoT limitations:
1) high costs for RF modules, 2) early - stage standards, 3)network confusion , 4) complex network variations, 5) over the air updates 6) lack of mobile operations and 7) waiting on 5G.
NB-IoT module prices are 4X too high to be able to reach hundreds of millions of connections that the mobile network operators are allocating. Enter fabless semiconductor ARM who has integrated power amplification, SIM and front-end modules into their licensable NB-IoT technology. ARM’s NB-IoT consortium is dedicated to driving down NB-IoT chip costs to less than $5.
LoRa has emerged as NB-IoT’s nearest competitor that will also capture a significant portion of the LPWA market in the next five years largely due its adaptability to serve different types of applications in private and public network deployments that are complementary to NB-IoT.
Our analysis of nearly 100 LPWA network operators found that 1 in 4 are planning/developing NB-IoT networks today including most of the top tier mobile operators. Over half of the NB-IoT network operators today are from the Asia Pacific region. A few examples of NB-IoT network operators with varying stages of network rollouts include China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom and its subsidiary T-Mobile, KDDI, NTT Docomo, Singtel, SoftBank, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telia, Telkomsel, Verizon and Vodafone.
Our phone interviews and analysis of hundreds of LPWA network operator announcements found that NB-IoT makes up about 40% of the these. The pace of activity has accelerated over the past 12 months and at the current rate the activity level will increase by 18X between 2016 and 2018.
In this report we analyze the market opportunity, competitive threats and status of NB-IoT network rollouts and commercial deployments, based on 250 interviews by phone and online surveys as well as an exhaustive review of the NB-IoT value system. It includes market size forecasts (2016-2022) for connected devices, annual unit shipments and breakdowns by market, application, technology, geography and equipment/services; the results from several surveys; an in-depth technology evaluation that compares NB-IoT to LoRaWAN™ and other LPWA technologies; and an in-depth an alysis of the growing NB-IoT ecosystem.
Companies Mentioned
- AT&T
- Bouygues
- Comcast machineQ
- China Mobile
- China Telecom
- Chunghwa Telecom
- Deutsche Telekom
- KDDI
- KPN
- Orange
- NTT Docomo
- Proximus
- Qowisio
- Senet
- Sigfox
- Singtel
- SK Telecom
- SoftBank
- Sprint
- Swisscom
- Tata
- Telecom Italia (TIM)
- Telefónica
- Telia
- Telkomsel
- Telstra
- Telus
- Verizon
- Vodafone
- Zain
